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THE INVENTION OF PRINTING 
IN CHINA AND ITS SPREAD 
WESTWARD 





Ts 
7. 
NOV 7 1995 


“ 4 
LM agicat seme 


GAIN OF Ph 


THE 
INVENTION 


PRINTING 
IN CHINA 


AND ITS 


SPREAD WESTWARD 


BY 
THOMAS FRANCIS CARTER, Pu.D. 


ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF CHINESE 
IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 


NEW YORK 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 


Oe 





CopyRIGHT, 1925 
By COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 


Printed from type. Published June, 1925 


Printed in the United States of America 


DOUGLAS C. MCMURTRIE + NEW YORK 


TO 


PAUL PEE LIOT 


Membre de ’ Institut, Professor of the Languages, 

History and Archaeology of Central Asia in the 

College de France, the master mind of Chinese 

historical research; whose example, whose writings, 

and whose revision of the manuscript have made 

possible such measure of accuracy as this work 
can claim 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


httos://archive.org/details/inventionofprintOOcart_0 


———  }.. 
ea BC) hae GG): NT By Nis 
6 


PAGE 
INTRODUCTION x1 
PART | 
THE BackGRouND oF PRINTING IN CHINA 
CHAP. 
1. The Invention of Paper I 
2. The Use of Seals 7 
3. Rubbings from Stone Inscriptions 12 
4. The Dynamic Force that created the Demand for 
Printing, the Advance of Buddhism 17 
Parr II 
Biock PrintTInc In CHINA 
5. The Significance of Block Printing in China, the Ink, 
and the Method Used 2 
6. The Beginnings of Block Printing in the Buddhist 
Monasteries of China 28 


7. The Empress Shotoku of Japan and her Million 
Printed Charms 7% 


8. The First Printed Book. The Diamond Sutra of 868 39 
g. The Printing of the Confucian Classics under Féng 


Tao. (932-953) 47 
10. The High Tide of Chinese Block Printing. The Sung 
and Mongol Dynasties (960-1368) og 


11. The Printing of Paper Money 70 


v1 


CHAP. 


12, 


24. 


Notes 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 
Part III 
Tur Course or Biock Printinc WESTWARD 
Early Commerce in Thought and in Wares along the 
Great Silk Ways 85 


. Paper’s Thousand Year Journey from China to Europe 95 
. Printing of the Uigur Turks in the Region of Turfan 102 


. Islam as a Barrier to Printing 112 


6 


—_ 


Meeting of China and Europe in the Mongol Empire 1 


Persia the Crossroads between the East and the West 126 


. Block Printing in Egypt during the Period of the Cru- 


sades ness, 

. Playing Cards as a Factor in the Westward Movement 
of Printing 139 
. The Printing of Textiles 145 
. Block Printing in Europe 150 

Part IV 
Printinc witH MovaB_e Type 

. The Invention of Movable Type in China 1$g 

. The Great Expansion of Movable Type Printing in 
Korea 169 
The Pedigree of Gutenberg’s Invention 180 
189 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 263 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND CHARTS 


TO FACE PAGE 


Chart, showing the History of Paper Manufacture, of 
Block Printing and of Typography in China, and Indi- 


cations as to their Course Westward frontispiece 


Stationery of Bamboo and Wood of the Han Dynasty 


. The Earliest Paper that has so far been discovered 
. Chinese Paper Makers in Peking 

. Chinese Seals and Seal Impressions 

. Primitive Charm Prints in the Tibetan Language 


. Clay Containers in which Tibetan Charm Prints were 


found 


. A Stone Inscription and a Paper Rubbing made from it 


. A Metal Stamp for making Figures of Buddha 


Fragment of a Roll of thin Paper with Stamped Buddhas 


. Chinese Writing, showing the Ink Stick and the Stone on 


which it is moistened 


. A Chinese Block Printer at Work 
. A Paper Stencil or Pounce 
. The Oldest Printing in the World. Sanskrit Charm, in 


Chinese Characters, printed in Japan about a.p. 770 


. The Caves of the Thousand Buddhas at Tun-huang 
. The World’s Oldest Printed Book. The Diamond Sutra 


of 868 


. A Block Print presented in Payment of a Vow at one of ° 


the Shrines in the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas 


4 


43 


vill ILLUSTRATIONS 
TO FACE PAGE 


18. A Tenth Century Woodcut from Tun-huang in which 
many small Buddha Figures are printed together from 


a single Block 46 
19. The Evolution of the Chinese Book 47 
20. Page from a Printed Book of the Sung Dynasty fags 
21. One of the earliest Printed Books of Japan 58 
22. A Buddhist Woodcut of the Sung Dynasty 59 


23. Note for One Thousand Cash, issued between 1368 and 
1399 72 
24. Map showing the Westward Course of Paper Making 85 


25. A Buddhist Sutra, printed in the Language of the Uigur 
Turks, with interlinear Notes in Sanskrit and Page 
Numbers in Chinese 102 


26. Leaf from a Sanskrit Book, printed to imitate the Pothi 


or Palm Leaf Books of India 103 
27. A Page from the Sanskrit Diamond Sutra 106 
28. A Bit of Tangut Printing 107 


29. A Fragment of a Printed Sutra in the Mongol Language 
in Square (’Phagspa) Script 120 


30. Letters from the Mongol Rulers of Persia to Philip the 
Fair of France, with Chinese Seal Impressions 126 


31. Reproduction of one of the Seal Impressions from the 
foregoing Letter of 1289 130 


32. Ruins of the Great Mosque of Tabriz, built during the 
reign of Ghazan Khan 131 


33. The Oldest of the Egyptian Block Prints 134 


34. 
35. 


36. 
37: 


38. 
39: 


40. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 1X 


TO FACE PAGE 


An old Chinese Playing Card 142 
An early European Block Cutter preparing Block for a 
Woodcut 150 
The Revolving Wheel. A Type-setting Device used in 
China in the early Fourteenth Century 162 
Wooden Type of the early Fourteenth Century in the 
Uigur Language 163 
Early Korean Metal Type 170 


Early European Typography, from Woodcuts by Jost 
Amman, 1568 182 


Page from Gutenberg’s 42-line Latin Bible 183 


Peay 


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TOL erie 


Va) 
‘shh 
rh | ‘AF 


*t 0 





INTRODUCTION 


OUR great inventions, that spread through Europe at the 

beginning of the Renaissance, had a large share in creating 

the modern world. Paper and printing paved the way for 
the religious reformation and made possible popular education. 
Gunpowder levelled the feudal system and created citizen armies. 
The compass discovered America and made the world instead of 
Europe the theater of history. In all these inventions and others 
as well, China claims to have had a conspicuous part. The pur- 
pose of the present work is to investigate the truth of this claim in 
the one domain of printing. 

The restlessness of the tribes of Central Asia during the early 
centuries of our era brought several hundred years of anarchy in 
China, corresponding to the Dark Ages in Europe; but as these 
barbarian migrations did not cause quite such a complete rooting 
up of classical civilization in the Far East as they did in the West, 
China quickly recovered and was earlier ready for those inven- 
tions which came into Christendom with the beginning of the 
Renaissance. Marco Polo’s record shows us a China whose new 
civilization already in the thirteenth century had come to full 
bloom and had advanced very much farther than that of contem- 
porary Europe. 

When Europe was ready for the new life, she found in the 
Arabic Empire and Constantinople reservoirs ready at hand 
where the lore of her own classical world had been stored away, 
and to these reservoirs she turned with a real thirst. But with the 
classic lore there was a certain new element that also entered 
Europe from the East—an essentially modern spirit of invention 
and practical discovery. The mediators of the inventions that 
reached Europe at this time were the Arabs and the Empire of the 
Mongols. But the inventors were neither Arab nor Mongol. 
There seems to be good reason to believe that certain processes 


xil INTRODUCTION 


that had been gradually evolved in China, when joined with the 
recovered civilization of Greece and Rome, had much to do with 
starting Europe forward on her course of progress, a course to 
which the classics alone could never have led. It is the glory of 
European genius, newly awakened from its thousand years of 
sleep, that it was able to seize these discoveries, dimly seen in the 
Far East, and in some cases but dimly understood in the land of 
their birth, and to make of them the basis for a civilization of 
which their discoverers could never have dreamed. 

Preéminent among these inventions of China, on account of 
their influence both in Eastern Asia and in Europe, stand paper 
and printing. The invention of paper has already received con- 
siderable attention. The scientific study of the subject in the 
West was begun by Dr. Friedrich Hirth, who held for many years 
the chair of Chinese at Columbia University, and its popular pre- 
sentation has been carried forward by Mr. H. G. Wells in his 
Outline of History. The facts concerning China’s part in the in- 
vention of printing, on the other hand, have been almost unknown 
to European scholarship, except in a few of their larger outlines. 
The Encyclopedia Britannica (Eleventh Edition), which in its 
article on typography devotes seventeen pages to the controversy 
as to whether Gutenberg or Coster invented movable type in 
Europe, tells all it knows of pre-European printing in less than 
half a column. And the catalog of the State Library in Berlin, in 
its two great folio volumes of titles on the history of printing, has 
just one title that refers to China—a magazine article that ap- 
peared in Paris in 1847. 

No historical research however can lay claim to complete 
originality, and this study of Chinese printing may be considered 
a compendium of the researches of a multitude of scholars, schol- 
ars of many centuries, Chinese, Japanese and Western, correlated 
with certain of the results of recent excavations in Turkestan and 
in Egypt. The biblography indicates the main sources, and indi- 
cates also the debt of gratitude felt by the author to all these in- 
vestigators, the results of whose labors have been freely borrowed. 


INTRODUCTION Xili 


On the other hand, the gathering together and correlating of this 
source material from different ages and different parts of the world 
has been largely a virgin field. It is this which has made the work 
at the same time difficult and inspiring. 

Apparently, the first mention in European literature of the 
Chinese invention of printing dates from the year 1550, when the 
Italian historian Jovius, from an examination of certain printed 
books brought from Canton by Portuguese travellers and pre- 
sented by the King of Portugal to the Pope, came to the conclusion 
that European printing was derived from China.! In the eigh- 
teenth century Phil. Couplet in the British Encyclopedia, writing 
evidently on the authority of Roman Catholic missionaries, as- 
signed the year 930 as the date of the Chinese invention. Gerard 
Meerman in his Origines Typographicae in 1765 told of early 
Chinese printing, basing his statement on Arabic authority. 

A further study of the subject from Chinese sources was made 
by Jules Klaproth *in 1834 and by Stanislas * Julien in 1847. The 
results of Julien’s work were published in a short article in the 
Journal Asiatique, which, in spite of inaccuracies, has formed the 
basis of practically all that has been written on the subject in the 
West up to the present. A letter from Thomas T. Meadows to 
Lord Elgin, published as part of a paper by Lord Robert Curzon 
in the Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society of London in 1858,? 
contains what is probably the best account of the Chinese inven- 
tion of block printing that has appeared in any European language 
even down to our own day, but unfortunately this letter has been 
hidden away in a little known publication and in an article the 
balance of which is of doubtful value, and it has apparently 
escaped the attention of later writers. Since 1858 little if any in- 
dependent work devoted to printing in China has appeared in 
any European language until 1923, when Dr. Hermann Hille? 
of Berlin published in a fifteen-page booklet a clear summary of 
the history of Chinese typography and its development in Korea, 
based partly on Julien and Satow, partly on independent research 
in Chinese sources. The writer had the privilege of working for 


XIV INTRODUCTION 


some months under the expert direction of Dr. Hiille, who is in 
charge of the Chinese department in the State Library at Berlin, 
and who very kindly placed all his source material at the writer's 
disposal. 

Meanwhile an article on the history of early printing in Korea 
and Japan was published in 1882 in the Journal of the Asiatic 
Society of Japan by Sir Ernest Satow * and has remained to the 
present the main source of what is known in the West on that sub- 
ject. 

Modern scholarship in Japan and China has produced at least 
three works * which gather up the main historical facts concerning 
the history of printing in their respective countries, the Japanese 
work, as is natural, dealing somewhat with Chinese sources and 
more fully with those of Korea, as well as with the Japanese de- 
velopment of the invention. Unfortunately these books are avail- 
able only in Japanese and Chinese respectively and have not been 
mentioned, so far as the writer is aware, in any European work. 
All are brief but are far more complete than the short sketches 
mentioned above that have appeared in European languages. 

These articles and books in five of the world’s leading languages 
have been used freely in the preparation of the present work, both 
for the actual information contained and more especially for their 
references to earlier Chinese literature. 

Another important source has been the great Chinese encyclo- 
pedias, especially the 7’u-shu-chi-ch’eng,’ published in 1726, and 
the Ko-chih-ching-yiian,’ published in 1735. These too have been 
valuable largely on account of their quotations from earlier works.* 
Unfortunately, while new improvements in the art of writing, 
such for instance as the invention of the hair pen and the inven- 
tion of paper, have called forth a voluminous literature of anti- 
quarian research by Chinese writers, printing has as a rule been 
taken for granted and sparsely mentioned. Calligraphy has been 
considered the work of artists, printing that of artisans. However, 
by supplementing such direct references as have been found with 
many indirect references, it is possible to gain a fairly clear pic- 


INTRODUCTION XV 


ture of the early history of the art, at least as clear a picture as 
we have of early European block printing, which grew up equally 
in the dark. Needless to say, further research will probably find 
very much material in the great mine of Chinese literature that 
has not yet been unearthed. 

A further source, and that which gives us our most certain in- 
formation, is archaeology. The desert air of Chinese Turkestan, 
like that of Egypt, has preserved intact the memorials of ancient 
civilization, and the researches of British, French, German, Rus- 
sian and Japanese expeditions have made it possible to recon- 
struct the history and daily life of these western outposts of China 
during the first thousand years or more of our era. One result of 
this research has been clear testimony to the accuracy of the 
Chinese records of the period. Another result bearing more 
directly on the subject in hand has been the discovery in different 
parts of Turkestan and its border lands of a large number of block 
prints and block books of varying date, which shed light both on 
the progress of the art of printing in China and on its westward 
course. Excavations in Egypt also have revealed the products of a 
hitherto unsuspected block printing activity continuing through 
the time of the Crusades, the significance of which must still be 
regarded as something of a mystery, but which may eventually 
lead the way toward the discovery of the connection between the 
block printing of the Far East and that of Europe. An examina- 
tion of these archaeological discoveries, in books, in the museums 
where they are preserved and more especially in personal conver- 
sation with the archaeologists themselves, has been the most in- 
teresting part of the study on which the present work is based. 

Further source material on particular phases of the problem will 
be found in the bibliography, which, on account of the variety of 
material, has been arranged by chapters. 

As indicated above, it is not only to books that the writer is 
indebted. A far more personal debt must here be acknowledged. 
The keenest pleasure in the preparation of the work has been the 
counsel, guidance and criticism—and the friendship—of some of 


XV1 INTRODUCTION 


the world’s leading scholars in the realms of Chinese, Central 
Asiatic and Arabic history. In this work nationality has been for- 
gotten. In Berlin and Vienna, as well as in Nanking, Paris and 
London, unfailing kindness and codperation have been met. 

The expert guidance of Dr. Albert von Le Coq, given freely day 
after day in the study of the Turfan discoveries at Berlin, the 
inspiration given by Dr. Adolf Grohmann of Prague in the study 
of the block prints of Egypt at Vienna, the help afforded by Mr. 
Arthur Waley and Mr. Lionel Giles in the examination of the Tun- 
huang finds at the British Museum, the well-nigh perfect library 
assistance afforded by Dr. Hermann Hille of Berlin, and the pa- 
tience of my colleagues at Columbia University, Professor Lucius 
C. Porter of the Chinese Department, Professor A. V. Williams 
Jackson of the Indo-Iranian Department, Professor Richard J. H. 
Gottheil of the Semitic Department and Professor William L. 
Westermann of the Department of Ancient History, in reading the 
manuscript and making valuable suggestions, all place the writer 
under a debt of gratitude such as can never be repaid. 

But deepest of all is my obligation to Professor Paul Pelliot of 
the Collége de France. Not only has Professor Pelliot set a new 
standard of accuracy and acumen in Chinese research to which 
all investigators are indebted. Not only have his researches in 
literature and in archaeology furnished a mass of facts on which 
many of the conclusions of this book are based. The debt of the 
writer to Professor Pelliot goes further. For Professor Pelliot has 
patiently gone over the first draft of the manuscript chapter by 
chapter, has gradually introduced the writer to more clear-cut and 
accurate methods of Chinese research, has made on almost every 
page suggestions and corrections which the writer has sought to 
follow up and incorporate, and has given freely of his store of his- 
torical understanding. 

In such a work as this, it is impossible to acknowledge one’s debt 
to all who have freely rendered assistance, but to the following, 
who, in addition to those already mentioned, have given largely of 
their time and their expert knowledge, a word of gratitude must 


INTRODUCTION XVil 


be expressed: Dr. Vasseely Alexeiev, professor of Chinese Philol- 
ogy, University of Leningrad (Petrograd); Mr. Laurence Binyon, 
curator of Oriental Art, British Museum; Professor Edward 
G. Browne, Department of Arabic, Pembroke College, University 
of Cambridge; M. Henri Cordier, Membre de Institut, professor 
of Chinese History in the Ecole des Langues Vivantes, Paris; Pére 
Henri Doré, author of Superstitions en Chine; Dr. Erich Ha- 
nisch, professor of Chinese, University of Berlin; Dr. Sven Hedin, 
head of the Swedish expeditions of exploration in Central Asia; 
Mr. John Hefter, librarian of Chinese books, Columbia Univer- 
sity Library, New York; Dr. Friedrich Hirth, former Dean Lung 
professor of Chinese, Columbia University; Mr. T. S. Hsii, of the 
faculty of Chinese History, Peking University; Mr. Homer B. 
Hulbert, author of The History of Korea; Mr. Y. F. Hung, 
head librarian, National Southeastern University, Nanking; 
Rev. William C. Kerr, American Presbyterian Mission, Seoul, 
Korea; Dr. Sten Konow, professor of Sanskrit, University of 
Kristiania; Dr. Berthold Laufer, curator of anthropology, Field 
Museum of Natural History, Chicago; Mr. S. Y. Li, acting li- 
brarian of the Chinese collection, Library of Congress, Washing- 
ton; Dr. David S. Margoliouth, professor of Arabic, Oxford Unt- 
versity; Dr. Bernhard Moritz, professor of Arabic, Seminar fir 
Orientalische Sprachen, Berlin; Dr. F. W. K. Miller, director of 
the Chinese and Indian departments, Museum fur VGlkerkunde, 
Berlin; Professor Rudolf M. Riefstahl, Department of Fine Arts, 
New York University; Dr. Clementz Scharschmidt, professor of 
Japanese, Seminar fiir Orientalische Sprachen, Berlin; Dr. Theo- 
dor Seif, curator of Arabic papyri and papers in the Erzherzog 
Rainer Collection, Austrian National Library, Vienna; Dr. Adolf 
Stix, curator of European incunabula, Austrian National Library, 
Vienna; Dr. Walter T. Swingle, chairman of Library Committee, 
United States Department of Agriculture, Washington; Dr. Clark 
Wissler, curator of anthropology, American Museum of Natural 
History, New York. 


Grateful acknowledgement should also be made of the sources 


XVill INTRODUCTION 


from which illustrations have been received. These are in the main 
from original photographs taken in the museums where the objects 
are preserved. The writer is specially indebted to Mr. Waley and 
to Dr. von Le Coq for their courtesy and assistance in obtaining 
photographs from the British Museum and the Museum fiir 
Vilkerkunde. Where illustrations are reproduced from other 
books, acknowledgment is made in abbreviated form beneath the 
illustration concerned, and the full title, with date and place of 
publication, will be found at the close of the bibliography. 

The romanization of Chinese words is that of Giles, which, in 
spite of serious drawbacks, seems to be the one most generally 
used among scholars. Exceptions are made of the names of prov- 
inces and large cities like Peking, where the post office romani- 
zation has been followed. The names of those dynasties that are 
easily confused in Giles’ romanization are here spelled in the more 
easily recognized form, Ts’in, Tsin and Kin. 

The hope with which this book goes forth cannot be better 
expressed than in the words of the Chinese writer Tai T’ung, who 
wrote and had printed during the thirteenth century a book on the 
history of Chinese writing: 


Were I to await perfection, my book would never be finished, so I 
have made shift to collect the fruits of my labors as I find them. It was 
said by the Master, “In preparing the governmental notifications, P’i 
Shen first made the rough draft; Shih Shu examined and discussed its con- 
tents; Tzii-yii, the manager of foreign intercourse, then made additions 
and subtractions; and finally Tzii-ch’an of Tung-li gave them the proper 
elegance and finish.” Such a rough draft is the present work. For the 
examination and discussion of whatever truth it contains, it awaits the 
judgment of a master-mind, . . . one whose wise and lofty spirit will 
lead him, without looking down upon the author, to . . . correct and 
suppress where the text is in error, to add where it is defective, and to 
supply new facts where it is altogether silent. ‘ 





Date 
B.C. 


200 





100 





100 


300 








400 


500 


600 


700 


200 








PAPER AND PRINTING 





Chinese History 


HAN DYNASTY 
B.C, 206-A.D. 220 


Corresponding to the period 
of the Roman Empire in the 
West. 

Period of national expan- 
sion. 


Literature characterized by 
intensive study of the 
models of the past rather 
than by originality. 


Conquest of Eastern Tur- 
kestan and earliest recorded 
contacts with the West. 


Silk trade between China 
and the Roman Empire 
assumes importance. 


Chinese expedition reaches 
Persian Gulf 97 A.D. 


Buddhism advancing across 
Central Asia and beginning 
to touch China. 


SIX DYNASTIES 
220-589 
Corresponding to the Dark 

Ages in Europe. 


Era of internal anarchy and 
of successive barbarian in- 
cursions from the North. 


Paper 


Invention of the hair pen by 
Meng T’ien (ab, B.C. 220) 
followed by the use of silk rolls 
as a writing material in place 
of bamboo and wood. 


Use of a near-paper made of 
silk fiber. 


This era is divided into three | ‘ 


main periods: (1) The period 
of the Three Kingdoms 
(220-265), when three Chi- 
nese dynasties fought for the 
mastery; (2) The Tsin 
Dynasty (265-420), when 
the country was more or less 


loosely united and put up a | ; 


rather weak fight against 
the Northern Barbarians; 
and (3) The Period of Divi- 
sion between North and 
South (420-589), | when 
North China was held by 
Turk and Tartar dynasties. 
The destruction of Classical 
civilization by the Northern 
invaders was not as com- 
plete as in Europe. Hence 
China recovered more 
quickly. 


The advance of Buddhism 
in China in this period cor- 
responds roughly with the 


advance of Christianity in | 


Europe. 


SUI DYNASTY 
589-618 
Reunites Empire 
T’'ANG DYNASTY 
618-907 


Block Printing 


The use of seals (first mentioned about 
B.C. 255) becomes general. Seals 
made of a great variety of materials. 
Impressions very beautiful and per- 
fect. Impressions on clay—without 
ink, 


175. Standard text of the Classics 
cut in stone. Some time after this 
date the practice began of making 
inked rubbings from these inscriptions. 


About 400. Earliest use of ink from 
lamp black, similar to modern Chinese 
ink, now used both for writing and for 
printing. 


Fifth Century (?). Earliest use of 


d | inked seals—inked with red cinnobar 


Corresponding with the res- | 
toration of the empire under | pe 


Charlemagne in Europe, but 
culturally far more ad- 
vanced than Charlemagne’s 


Empire. The ancient glory | 


of the Empire is restored, 
and, refreshed by new 
blood, a new religion and 
new contacts with the out- 


side world, China becomes | 
the world’s most highly de- | 
veloped empire, reaching |” 
her highest point of achieve- | 


ment in military prowess, in 
painting, and in lyric poetry. 


The beginning of the period | 


is marked by magnificent 


and stamped on paper. 


Sixth Century (?), Large Taoist seals, 
made of wood, used for making 
charms. 


Between 627 and 649. Earliest extant 
rubbing from inscription, 


Seventh Century (?), Experimentation 
in Buddhist monasteries with various 
forms of reduplication,—seals, rub- 
bings, Buddha stamps, stencils, and 
textile prints, leading the way, proba- 


bly early in the eighth century, to true 
| block printing. 





Their Evolution in China and Their Spread Westward 





Western | Date 
History | B.C. 


200 


100 


Fall of 
Jerusalem 





100 


Marcus 
Aurelius 


200 


300 


400 


500 


700 


is marked by magnificent 
religious toleration—a wel- 
come to all world faiths. The 
later reigns, torn by relig- 
ious persecution, do not 
maintain the same stand- 
ards of national vigor. 


800 


900 


FIVE DYNASTIES 
907-960 
Short period of disruption. 


SUNG DYNASTY 
960-1280 


Having much in common 


sance in Europe, but com- 
ing earlier, because the de- 
struction of classical culture 
by the barbarian inroads 
had never been so complete. 


1000 





Anera of national weakness, 
the boundaries of the Em- 
pire constantly shrinking 
before the inroads from the 


North. 


An era of intellectual great- 
ness—of philosophical, his- 
torical, and scientific writ- 


1100] '"&: 


Earliest practical use of the | 
compass and of gunpowder. | 


with the Classical Renais- | 


793 
Bagdad 





Ab. 1100 


Intercourse with Western | 


Asia less than in the preced- | 


ing and subsequent periods. a : 


1200 The Classics of the Confu- 
Buddhist or Taoist thought, 
are made the basis of cul- 
tural advance. 


YUAN (MONGOL) 
DYNASTY 
1280-1368 


1300} Corresponding to the Period if 


of the Crusades, Era of Asi- 
atic Empire. China and 


Europe meet for a moment | 


face to face, China passes 
the torch to Europe, and 
China’s progress for a time 
ceases. 


MING DYNASTY 
1368-1644 
Parallelism with Europe 
ends. Era of strong na- 
tionalism, of isolation, and 
of comparative stagnation. 
The first century of the dy- 
nasty is marked by a strong 
national and cultural re- 
vival in Korea and by a re- 
newed Chinese influence in 


Japan. 


1400 


1500 


|__| Chinese Getriral Domain 


cian Age, as opposed to] — 





772 
EARLIEST EXTANT BLOCK 
PRINTS. 


One million charms in Sanskrit lang- 
uage and Chinese character, printed 
in Japan. Several still extant. 


868 
EARLIEST PRINTED BOOK 

Diamond Sutra, printed by Wang 
Chieh, found by Stein at Tun-huang. 
Roll 16 feet long. 

883. First mention of printing in 
literature. Szechuen the center of a 
printing activity which included non- 
religious works. 


Early Tenth Century. First printing 
of paper money in Szechuen. 


9375953 
PRINTING OF THE CLASSICS 


by Feng Tao ushers in the era of large 
scale official printing. 
About fifty printed charms and votive 
offerings found at Tun-huang. Dates 
run from 947 to 983. 


969. Earliest clear mention of playing 
cards, 


972. Printing of Buddhist Canon 
(Tripitaka) in 130,000 pages. 


994-1063. Printing of the great dynas- 
tic histories. 


1016. Earliest of the printed books 
(Buddhist) in Chinese and Tangut, 
found at Kara-Khoto in Mongolia. 


The Sung dynasty marks the high tide 
of Chinese printing. All important 
literature was printed. Quality never 
surpassed. Many original editions are 
still in the hands of private collectors 
and libraries. 





Ab. 1100. Currency inflation begins, 
leading to reckless issues of printed 
paper money, which lasted to the end 
of the dynasty. Throughout the Sung 
and Mongol periods China was on a 
paper money basis. 


Twelfth Century. Printing of Bud- 
dhist books in Japan begins. 


Through the thirteenth and fourteenth 
centuries (and probably earlier) Tur- 


| fan in Turkestan was a great Bud- 
| dhist printing center. 
| sutras and charms in six yon peck 


Quantities of 


vi Through the same period (and per- 
‘| haps earlier) block printing was car- 
| ried on in Egypt. Fifty or more of 
| these prints extant. ; 


| 1289 and 1305. Letters with large Chi- 


nese seal impressions sent from Persia 
to King of France. Still extant in Paris. 


1294. Issue of printed paper money at 
Tabriz, Persia, in Chine in Chinese and Arabic. 


1297. Chinese paper m paper money described 
by Marco Polo (also withia a century” 
by seven other European writers). 


Ab. 1307. Chinese block rinting 
accurately described in ic and 
Persian by Rashid-eddin. " 


| dating from about 1300. 


Charle- 
magne 


800 





900 





1000 


1041-1049 
INVENTION OF 
MOVABLE TYPE 


by Pi Sheng. Type made of 
earthenware, set in an iron 
form. 


Norman 
Conquest 


Improvement of Pi Sheng’s 
system. Both type and 
form made of earthenware. 1100 
Type made of tin, per- 
forated and held in place by 


a wire. 


Neither the type of earthen- 
ware nor the type of tin were 
ever largely used, on ac- 
count of difficulty in get- 
ting a satisfactory ink. 





First 


Crusade {1200 


Magna 
Charta 





WOODEN TYPE 


| The use of wooden type ex- 


tends to borders of Turke- 
stan and is taken up by the 
Uigur Turks. Font of type 
in Uigur language, found by 
M. Pelliot at Tun-huang, 


1314. Full and accurate de- 
scription of wooden type 
and of a new type-setting 
device by Wang Cheng in 


| the Book of Agriculture. 





—_— 
Neel Word a hewritale 


“a Moalen World 


Wyclif 
Chaucer 


Korea. 


1400 


1403. First issue of type 
from the Korean royal foun- 
dry. 1409. Earliest extant 
book printed with movable 
type in Korea. 1420. Sec- 
ond Korean font. 1434. 
Third Korean font. 


Last 
Crusade 


Fall of 


id Wea oe 1500 
; Christendom 








BA KTS! 


THE BACKGROUND OF PRINTING 
IN CHINA 





CHAPTER I 
THE INVENTION OF PAPER 


ACK of the invention of printing lies the use of paper, which 
B is the most certain and the most complete of China’s inven- 

tions. While other nations may dispute with China the 
honor of those discoveries where China found only the germ, to be 
developed and made useful to mankind in the West, the manufac- 
ture of paper was sent forth from the Chinese dominions a fully 
developed art. Paper of rags, paper of hemp, paper of various 
plant fibers, paper of cellulose, paper sized and loaded to improve 
its quality for writing, paper of various colors, writing paper, 
wrapping paper, even paper napkins and toilet paper'—all were 
in general use in China during the early centuries of our era. The 
paper, the secret of whose manufacture was taught by Chinese 
prisoners to their Arab captors at Samarkand in the eighth cen- 
tury, and which in turn was passed on by Moorish subjects to their 
Spanish conquerors in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is in 
all essential particulars the paper that we use to-day. And even 
in our own times China has continued to furnish new develop- 
ments in paper manufacture, both the so-called “India paper” 
and “papier maché” having been introduced from China into the 
West during the nineteenth century.? 

Though the invention of paper is carefully dated in the dynastic 
records as belonging to the year a.p. 105, the date is evidently 
chosen rather arbitrarily, and this invention, like most inventions 
of our own day, was a gradual process. Up to the end of the Chou 
Dynasty (255 B.c.), through China’s classical period, writing was 
done with a bamboo pen, with ink of lacquer made from tree sap,* 
upon slips of bamboo or wood. Wood was used largely for short 
messages, bamboo for longer writings and for books. The bamboo 
was cut into strips about nine inches long and wide enough for a 


s) THE BACKGROUND tPrzck 


single column of characters. The wood was sometimes in the same 
form, sometimes wider. The bamboo strips, being stronger, were 
capable of being perforated at one end and strung together, either 
with silken cords or with leather thongs, to form books. Both the 
wooden strips and those of bamboo are carefully described in 
books on antiquities, written in the early centuries of the Christian 
era. The abundance of wooden and bamboo slips dug up in recent 
excavations in Turkestan conform exactly to the early descriptions. 

The invention of the writing brush of hair, attributed to the 
general Méng Tien in the third century B.c., worked a transfor- 
mation in writing materials. This transformation is indicated by 
two changes in the language. The word for chapter used after 
this time means “roll”; the word for writing materials becomes 
“bamboo and silk” instead of “bamboo and wood.” There is 
evidence that the silk used for writing during the early part of the 
Han Dynasty consisted of actual silk fabric.4 Letters on silk dat- 
ing probably from Han times, have been found together with the 
earliest extant paper in a watch tower of a spur of the Great Wall. 

But as the dynastic records of the time state, “silk was too ex- 
pensive and bamboo too heavy.” The philosopher Mé Ti, when 
he travelled from state to state, carried with him three cart loads 
of bamboo books. The emperor Ts’in Shih Huang set himself the 
task of going over daily a hundred and twenty pounds of state 
documents. Clearly a new writing material was needed. 

The first step was probably a sort of paper or near-paper made 
of raw silk. This is indicated by the character for paper, which 
has the silk radical showing material, and by the definition of that 
character in the Shuo-wén, a dictionary that was finished about 
the year A.D. 100. A bit of this early near-paper may also be 
among the finds of Dr. Stein, but it is not yet certain. 

The year A.D. 105 is usually set as the date of the invention of 
paper, for in that year the invention was officially reported to the 
emperor by the eunuch Ts’ai Lun. Whether Ts’ai Lun was the real 
inventor or only the person in official position who became the 
patron of the invention (as Féng Tao did later with printing) is 


Cu. J] THE INVENTION OF PAPER 8 


uncertain. In any case his name is indelibly connected with the 
invention in the mind of the Chinese people. He has even been 
deified as the god of paper makers, and in the T’ang Dynasty the 
mortar which Ts’ai Lun was supposed to have used for macerating 
his old rags and fish nets was brought with great ceremony from 
Hunan to the capital and placed in the imperial museum. The 
following is the account of the invention, as written by Fan Yeh in 
the fifth century in the official history of the Han Dynasty, among 
the biographies of famous eunuchs: 


“During the period Chien-ch’u (A.D. 76-83), Ts’ai Lun formed 
part of the Imperial Guard. The emperor Ho Ti, on coming to the 
throne, knowing that Ts’ai Lun was a man full of talent and zeal, 
appointed him a privy counsellor. In this position he did not 
hesitate to bestow either praise or blame upon His Majesty. 

“In the ninth year of the period Yung-yiian (a.p. 97) Ts’ai 
Lun became inspector of public works. By his plans and according 
to his arrangements, engineers and workmen made, always with 
the best of materials, swords and arms of various sorts. Later gen- 
erations could do no better than imitate his methods of work. 

“Jn ancient times writing was generally on bamboo or on pieces 
of silk, which were then called chih.® But silk being expensive and 
bamboo heavy, these two materials were not convenient. Then 
Ts’ai Lun thought of using tree bark, hemp, rags and fish nets. 
In the first year of the Yiian-hsing period (a.p. 105) he made a 
report to the emperor on the process of paper making, and re- 
ceived high praise for his ability. From this time paper has been 


ne J 26 


in use everywhere and is called the ‘paper of Marquis Ts’ai’. 


The biographical note goes on to tell how Ts’ai Lun became 
involved in intrigues between the empress and the grandmother 
of the emperor, as a consequence of whi¢h, in order to avoid ap- 
pearing before judges to answer for statements that he had made, 
“he went home, took a bath, combed his hair, put on his best 
robes, and drank poison.””? 


4 THE BACKGROUND [Pr. I 


Two statements in this quotation have received ample confir- 
mation from discoveries along the Great Wall and in Turkestan. 
The rapid spread of the use of paper, attested by many notices in 
Chinese literature, is rather surprisingly shown by the discovery 
along with letters on silk and wood, of nine letters on paper in a 
watch tower of a western spur of the Great Wall, which must have 
been written some time within the first fifty years after Ts’ai 
Lun’s invention.® 

The statement concerning the materials used has also been 
thoroughly confirmed. Examination of paper from Turkestan, 
dating from the second to the eighth centuries of our era, shows 
that the materials used are the bark of the mulberry tree; hemp, 
both raw fibers and those which have been fabricated (fish nets, 
etc.); and various plant fibers, especially China grass (Boehmeria 
Nivea), not in their raw form but taken from rags. 

The discovery of rag paper in Turkestan, while confirming the 
statement in the Chinese records, came as a surprise to many 
western scholars. From the time of Marco Polo till some forty 
years ago, all oriental paper had been known as “‘cotton paper,” 
and it had been supposed that rag paper was a German or Italian 
invention of the fifteenth century. Wiesner and Karabacek in 
1885-1887 showed as a result of microscopic analysis that the large 
quantity of Egyptian paper that had at that time recently been 
brought to Vienna, and that dated from about A.D. 800 to 1388, 
was almost all rag paper. A subsequent examination of the earliest 
European papers showed that they too were made in the main 
from rags. The theory was then advanced and generally believed 
that the Arabs of Samarkand were the inventors of rag paper, 
having been driven to it by inability to find in Central Asia the 
materials that had been used by the Chinese. In 1904 this theory 
suffered a rude shock. Dr. Stein had submitted to Dr. Wiesner of 
Vienna some of the paper found by him during his first expedition 
to Turkestan, and Dr. Wiesner, while finding in that no pure rag 
paper, did find paper in which rags were used as a surrogate, the 
main material being the bark of the paper mulberry. The theory 





STATIONERY OF 
BAMBOO AND 
WOOD OF THE 
HAN DYNASTY 


Bamboo 20 x 1.3 cm, 
Wood 11 x 2 cm. 


Schretb und Buchwesen. 
















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THE EARLIEST PAPER THAT HAS SO FAR BEEN DISCOVERED 


Date about A.D. 150. Found in 1907 by Sir Aurel Stein in the ruins of a spur of the 

Great Chinese Wall, together with some fragments in Chinese of about the same 

date, and eight other letters which like this are in the Sogdian language. When 
found, the letters were sealed in envelopes of paper and rag 


(19 X 24.5 cm.) 


British Museum. 


Cu. I] THE INVENTION OF PAPER 5 


was changed to suit the facts. The Arabs of Samarkand were no 
longer the first to have used rags in the production of paper, but 
the first to have produced paper so/e/y of rags. Finally in rgitr, 
after Dr. Stein’s second expedition, the earliest paper—that from 
the watch tower in the Great Wall—was laid before Dr. Wiesner, 
and was found to be a pure rag paper! Rag paper, supposed till 
1885 to have been invented in Europe in the fifteenth century, 
supposed till 1911 to have been invented by the Arabs of Samar- 
kand in the eighth century, was carried back to the Chinese of the 
second century, and the Chinese record, stating that rag paper 
was invented in China at the beginning of the second century, was 
confirmed. 

The use of paper, so far superior to bamboo and silk as a writing 
material, made rapid headway. Extensive improvements in its 
manufacture were made by Tso Tziti-yi, a younger contemporary 
of Ts’ai Lun. The records of the next centuries contain abundant 
references to the use of paper and to certain special fancy and 
beautiful papers that from time to time appeared. In Turkestan, 
at each point where excavations have been undertaken, the time 
when wooden stationery gave way to paper can be fairly accu- 
rately dated. By the time of the invention of block printing all 
Chinese Turkestan, so far as excavations show, was using paper. ° 
The use of paper in China proper had apparently become general 
much earlier. 

The papers found in Turkestan show a certain amount of 
progress, especially in the art of loading and sizing to make writ- 
ing more easy. The earliest papers are simply a net of rag fibers 
with no sizing. The first attempt to improve the paper so that it 
would absorb ink more readily consisted of giving the paper a coat 
of gypsum. Then followed the use of a glue or gelatine made from 
lichen. Next came the impregnation of the paper with raw dry 
starch flour. Finally this starch flour was mixed with a thin 
starch paste, or else the paste was used alone. Better methods of 
maceration also came into use that proved less destructive of the 
fibers and produced a stronger paper. All these improvements 


6 THE BACKGROUND [Pr. I 


were perfected before the invention was passed on to the Arabs in 
the eighth century and before the first block printing in China 
began. So far as an invention can ever be said to be completed, it 
was a completed invention that was handed over to the Arabs at 
Samarkand. The paper making taught by the Arabs to the Span- 
iards and Italians in the thirteenth century was almost exactly as 
they had learned it in the eighth. The paper used by the first 
printers of Europe differed very slightly from that used by the first 
Chinese block printers five centuries or more before. 





CHINESE PAPER MAKERS IN PEKING 


Asia Magazine. 








CHINESE SEALS AND SEAL IMPRESSIONS 


These impressions are made with ink on paper like the impressions 
of a rubber stamp 


Schreib und Buchwesen. 


CHAPTER VAL 


THE USE OF SEALS 


print and seal is suggestive. A study of the history of 

the word sheds considerable light on the origin of Chinese 
printing. During the Han Dynasty the word yin! meant to 
authenticate by the impression of a seal on clay. When clay 
impressions gave way some time about the fifth or sixth cen- 
tury of our era to inked impressions in red, the same word 
was used. When Taoist priests used as charms the impressions 
of wooden seals several inches square inscribed with the name 
of Lao-tztii or some other worthy, these larger seals were yin. 
When later the manifolding of Buddhist pictures and texts 
began, this block printing was yin. With the advent of every 
new invention, from that of moveable type in the eleventh 
century to that of the linotype in the twentieth, the same word 
has done duty, and the word yin to-day, which still means seal, 
signifies also every form of printing, taken in the broadest sense. 

As the relation between Chinese printing and Chinese seals 
has not previously been traced, so far as the author is aware, it 
may be well to examine this genealogy in more detail. 

Back of the seal and the seal impression—away back in the 
Chou Dynasty (before 255 B.c.)—lies a practice that reminds one 
of the tearing of the laundry check in the Chinese laundries of 
America.2 When a contract was made, it was written in duplicate 
on the two ends of a stick of bamboo. The bamboo was broken 
and one end retained by each party. The fitting of the broken 
ends was the authentication of the contract. In like manner, 
when the emperor bestowed a patent of nobility, the token of that 
patent was one half of a broken piece of jade—the other half being 
kept in the imperial possession.$ 


ch fact that the same Chinese word to-day denotes both 


g THE BACKGROUND (Pr. I 


With the advent of the great emperor Ts’in Shih Huang 
(246-209 B.c.), the unifier of China and the builder of the Great 
Wall, and with the more complex organization that then began, 
the broken pieces of bamboo and jade gradually gave place to 
seals and seal impressions.‘ The great seal of the conqueror, 
brought from the southern state of Ch’u by the minister Li 
Sst, and engraved with eight characters, was for centuries the 
seal of empire, and its fortunes figure both in history and in 
romance. 

The transition from the broken jade to the seal—from the prim- 
itive matching of broken edges to the more advanced and compli- 
cated matching of impression and die—was a natural one. But it 
may have been hastened by events that were taking place in an- 
other part of Asia. Just a hundred years before Ts’in Shih Huang’s 
conquests, Alexander the Great had conquered a part of India and 
had brought Greek culture to certain countries of Central Asia 
which were not so far removed from the expanding borders of 
China. In the land that lies between Alexander’s empire and 
that of China—the country now called Chinese Turkestan— 
there was found a few years ago by Sir Aurel Stein a collection of 
deeds, the seals upon which show the strange mingling of influ- 
ences, Eastern and Western, that was going on during the Han 
Dynasty, the dynasty that followed Ts’in Shih Huang. The docu- 
ments, written on wood, are all closed, bound with cords, and 
sealed, the devices of the seal impressions being in some cases 
Chinese characters, in others elephants and Indian emblems, in 
still others heads of Zeus, Eros and Medusa.® It is of course far 
from certain that this Hellenistic influence had penetrated beyond 
Turkestan and‘into China—still less certain that it had pene- 
trated as early as the reign of Ts’in Shih Huang. On the other 
hand it is not an impossibility.® 

With the Han Dynasty (B.c. 206-A. D.220) the use of seals grew 
steadily more common, both for private and for imperial use. 
Seal cutting came to be a fine art, and for perfection of workman- 
ship the seals of this time have never been surpassed.? They were 


Cu. IT] SEALS 9 


made of jade, of gold, of silver, of copper, of ivory and of rhino- 
ceros horn.® 

The seal impressions of the Han Dynasty that have been found 
are in one respect quite different from those of later times. The 
impressions were made, like those of Europe,’ in a soft substance 
(in China a sort of clay was used) and without coloring matter, 
like the seal impressions in wax to which we are accustomed in 
the West. From the T’ang Dynasty on, on the other hand, 
such seal impressions as have been found have been made not in 
clay, but with ink (usually red ink of cinnobar) on paper, like the 
impressions of a rubber stamp. It is this stamped seal impression 
that developed naturally into the block print. For the stamping 
of a seal with ink on paper is not very far removed from block 
printing. The seal was small and its purpose was authentication. 
The block print was larger and its purpose was reduplication. The 
idea of authentication—a survival from association with the seal— 
was never quite lost in Chinese printing. When Rashid-eddin of 
Persia in the fourteenth century—in the days of large scale book 
publication—described Chinese printing, he described it as a 
method of authentication of documents. 

When the transition took place from the clay seal impression 
of the Han Dynasty to the paper and ink impression of later times, 
it is impossible to determine with accuracy. Very few seal impres- 
sions of the transition time have been found in Turkestan. From 
Chinese records, combined with such evidence as can be gathered 
from Turkestan finds, it would seem that the transition took place 
about the fifth and sixth centuries of our era." At one point in 
Turkestan where documents of the transition period were found, 
those written on wood were sealed with clay, while those written 
on paper were sealed with ink.2 The transition was without 
doubt gradual, and followed naturally the increasing use of paper. 

As for the transition from the stamped seal to the true block 
print, there seem to have been two lines of development. The 
Buddhist line—the line which finally bore fruit and yielded not 
only charms but woodcuts and books in abundance—will be 


10 THE BACKGROUND [Prot 


traced in a later chapter. The Taoist line of approach is much 
more vague and uncertain, yet it seems rather likely that the 
Taoists in their desire for charms developed the seal impression 
into something very closely resembling a block print even earlier 
than the Buddhists. 

A Taoist writer, Ko Hung, in the fourth century made the curi- 
ous statement, “‘The ancients, whenever they entered the moun- 
tains, wore a ydieh-chang seal of the Yellow God, four inches in 
breadth and bearing a hundred and twenty characters, with 
which they made impressions in clay, in consequence of which, 
whenever they halted, neither tigers nor wolves ventured to ap- 
proach. If while travelling they saw a fresh foot-print and im- 
pressed the seal there in the same direction in which the beast 
moved, they made the tiger proceed, and, if they did so in the 
reverse direction, they made it return... . A Taoist doctor in Wu 
named Tai Ping made some hundreds of yiieh-chang impressions 
in clay, and strewed that clay broadcast into the abyss; on which 
after a while a large tortoise rose to the surface more than ten feet 
in diameter. When it was slain the sick all recovered.’ 

These large charm seals, large enough to contain a hundred and 
twenty characters, were used not to print with ink, but to make 
impressions on clay—but they were made in the fourth century 
when all seal impressions were on clay. Some time in the next two 
hundred years or so, the fashion in non-Taoist seal impressions 
changed from clay to red ink. The question is, whether the Tao- 
ists with their large seals kept abreast of the times. There is evi- 
dence that these large seals were made of wood," and there is 
abundant evidence that the Taoists loved red ink—that they 
loved it especially for their charms, on account of the extra author- 
ity that the red seemed to give. Exact evidence that their 
stamped seals, as well as their written charms, were made with 
red ink is yet to be found. The earliest block printing of which we 
now have clear proof consists of Buddhist charms and dates from 
the eighth century.» When the evidence is all in, it is likely to 
show that before this date the Taoists had dipped their wooden 





PRIMITIVE CHARM PRINTS IN THE TIBETAN LANGUAGE 


(Charms 10.4 x 2.06 cm. each) 


Museum fiir V olkerkunde. 





CLAY CONTAINERS IN WHICH TIBETAN CHARM PRINTS 
WERE FOUND 


To find the charm, the clay container must be broken open. Though these 

charms may not be earlier than the twelfth century, they represent a sur- 

vival of the most primitive form of block printing. From Sangim Agiz near 
Turfan 


Museum fiir V Glkerkunde. 


Cu. IT] SEALS II 


seals in red ink of cinnobar and had made charms of such form 
that they will take rank as the world’s first block printing. 

It is not impossible that these Taoist seal-charms were the an- 
cestors also of playing cards, but before that can be stated with 
confidence much fuller research must be done.!” 

In any case, whether Buddhist or Taoist, the charm was the 
transition from the seal to the block print. For with the advent 
of the stamped charm, reduplication, and large scale reduplica- 
tion, came to be the dominant purpose.'® 


CHAPTER III 
RUBBINGS FROM STONE INSCRIPTIONS 


HILE the connection of seals with the beginnings of 

\) \) block printing has never been especially noted by 

Chinese writers, there is a practice of taking inked rub- 
bings or squeezes from stone inscriptions, which has always been 
recognized as having directly led the way to the making of books 
by inked impressions from wood. 

The process is very simple. A piece 4 felt is laid on the surface 
of the stone inscription, and over this is applied a thin tough sheet 
of cohesive paper that has previously been moistened. The paper 
with the felt behind it is then hammered with a mallet and rubbed 
with a brush till it fits into every depression and crevice of the 
stone. As soon as the paper is dry, a stuffed pad of silk or cotton 
is dipped in sized ink and passed lightly and evenly over it. When 
the paper is finally peeled off, it is found to be imprinted with a 
perfect and durable impression of the inscription, which comes 
out in white reserve on a black ground. The process is similar to 
block printing, but the characters of the inscription are cut into 
the stone instead of standing out in relief as they do in wood. 
Furthermore, as the ink is applied to the surface of the paper that 
is away from the stone, the text on the stone is not reversed. The 
direction of the text on the paper is the same as that on the stone 
from which it is taken. 

As the seal charm was the Taoist preparation for printing, de- 
veloping in Buddhist hands into the printing of religious texts and 
pictures, so these rubbings from stone may be said to have con- 
stituted in the main the Confucian preparation. 

The practice of cutting in stone the text of the Confucian Clas- 
sics in order to insure permanency and accuracy goes back as far 
as the year a.p. 175. The statement in the annals of the Han 
Dynasty is as follows: 





A STONE INSCRIPTION AND A PAPER 


RUBBING MADE FROM IT 


Schreib und Buchwesen. 





Cu. III] RUBBINGS FROM INSCRIPTIONS 13 


“Because the time of writing the canonical works of the sages 
was long past and many errors had entered in and were being 
passed on by scholars of inferior worth, it was found that for later 
students there would be no correct text. Therefore in the fourth 
year of the period Hsi-ping (a.v. 175) Ts’ai Yung and others 
[names and titles] joined in a memorial to the emperor to have the 
text of the Six Classics thoroughly revised. The emperor granted 
the request. Ts’ai Yung then wrote the corrected text with his 
own hand on stones outside the gates of the state academy. 
Thereupon later scholars and students all took these inscriptions 
as standard. As soon as the stones had been set up, the people 
who came to see them and to make exact copies' were so many 
that there were thousands of carts every day and the streets and 
avenues of the city were blocked by them.’” 

The traditional interpretation of this passage is that the words 
here translated ‘‘make exact copies” actually refer to the making 
of rubbings, and that this form of printing or pre-printing goes as 
far back as the second century.* Whether this is true or not, the 
process certainly began early, and there is little doubt that it was 
earlier than the taking of impressions from wood. The earliest 
date that can be set with certainty is the reign of T’ai Tsung of the 
T’ang Dynasty, during whose reign (4.D. 627-649) a rubbing was 
made which was discovered by M. Pelliot at Tun-huang.‘ 

The practice of cutting in stone the text of the Classics per- 
sisted, each important dynasty considering it a duty thus to con- 
serve the results of the best textual criticism of the day. The 
Stone Classics of the T’ang Dynasty, of which very many rub- 
bings were made, and which served ultimately as the model for 
the printing of the Classics, were set up between the years 836 and 
841, and a portion of this ancient stone inscription has been re- 
cently discovered. The official history of the T’ang Dynasty re- 
records the appointment of certain officers called “makers of 
rubbings,” whose duties seem to have been to issue authorized 
rubbings of the inscriptions in stone.* 

But the discoveries at Tun-huang reveal the fact that these 


14 THE BACKGROUND hex 


Confucian texts were not the only ones that were being cut in 
stone and reproduced by rubbing. Parallel with the early devel- 
opment of block printing this sort of lithography was also going on 
in Buddhist monasteries—developing until whole books were 
being produced. The manuscript chamber at Tun-huang, that 
contained the earliest block printed book, the Diamond Sutra of 
868, contained a copy of the very same book in the form of litho- 
graph rubbing. The two copies, the one printed from wood, the 
other from stone, both date from the ninth century. The stone 
prints found at Tun-huang make it evident that already in the 
ninth century the practice had begun of preparing stones with the 
special purpose of taking rubbings from them, and that at least as 
early as the first books from blocks of wood (and probably 
earlier) both single sheets and roll-books were thus being printed 
from specially prepared blocks of stone.’ 

However it was in orthodox Confucian circles and as an aid to 
the correct transmission of the Classics that the stone inscription 
and the inked rubbing had their chief importance. Even after 
block printing began, and had remained for a century or two 
locked away in the Buddhist monasteries, the rubbing from stone 
was still the one official and orthodox method for the reduplica- 
tion of standard texts. It was the union of these two processes, 
the Buddhist block print (itself perhaps based on the earlier 
Taoist seal charm) and the Confucian rubbing, that produced the 
great official block printing activity of Féng Tao’s time and instt- 
tuted the era—during the tenth to the fourteenth centuries—when 
all of China’s great literature was printed. The important mem- 
orial of 932 by Féng Tao and Li Yu, that lay back of this awaken- 
ing, began, “‘In the time of the Han emperors Confucian scholars 
were honored and the Classics were cut in stone in three different 
scripts. In T’ang times also inscriptions of the Classics were made 
in the Imperial School. Our dynasty has too many other things to 
attend to and cannot undertake such a task as to have stone in- 
scriptions erected. However we have seen men from Wu and Shu 
(Kiangsu and Szechuen) who sold books that were printed from 


Cu. IJI] RUBBINGS FROM INSCRIPTIONS ne 


blocks of wood. ‘There were many different texts, but among 
them no orthodox classics. If the classics could be revised and 
thus cut in wood and published, it would be a very great boon to 
the study of literature.’’® 

It is thus evident that when the Confucian Classics were cut in 
wood—the event that marked the beginning of large scale block 
printing—those in charge of the work had no idea of printing, but 
thought they were continuing the ancient practice of cutting in- 
scriptions, using wood instead of stone—after the analogy of cer- 
tain Buddhist prints that they had seen—for the sake of ease and 
economy. It was thus that the wooden block and its printed im- 
pression developed naturally from the stone inscription and its 
rubbing. The Buddhist prints—which had developed from charms 
and seals—gave the idea of cutting the inscription in reverse and 
gave also a new technique for taking the rubbing. The stone 
inscription gave the official precedent. 

Having thus been one of the influences that gave birth to 
wide-spread block printing, the use of rubbings did not cease, but 
continued a parallel existence. Gradually during the tenth cen- 
tury, the century that showed the greatest activity in the de- 
velopment of all duplicating processes, the emphasis veered 
more and more from the inscription to the rubbing made from it. 
In the year 992 there is a record of the making of lithograph books 
which contained duplicates of the autographs of the great men of 
the Tsin and the Wei dynasties, taken from some tombs that had 
recently been looted. Lithography was thus the recognized 
method of preserving exact copies of beautiful calligraphy." 
When the stone blocks became broken through constant use, they 
were mended with silver wire, the impression of which could 
often be detected in the rubbing. During the later years of the 
Sung period these lithograph books of 992 were treasured as great 
rarities. 

Throughout the Sung Dynasty books from stone blocks con- 
tinued to be published. From China the art spread to Japan 
and in 1315 a large collection of books was there printed by this 


16 THE BACKGROUND (Prat 


process. The taking of rubbings still continues in China as a 
means of making exact duplicates of ancient inscriptions, and 
there is no indication that the method has materially changed from 
the earliest times. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE DYNAMIC FORCE THAT CREATED THE 
DEMAND FOR PRINTING, THE ADVANCE 
OF BUDDHISM 


dependent for its greatest manifestations on strong reli- 

gious feeling. It can be said with equal truth that every 
advance into new territory made by printing has had as its mo- 
tive an expanding religion. In the whole long history of the 
advance of printing from its beginnings in China down to the 
twentieth century, there is scarcely a language or a country 
where the first printing done has not been either from the sacred 
scriptures or from the sacred art of one of the world’s three great 
missionary religions. China began by printing Buddhist pictures 
and texts.! Japan had printed for six centuries and brought the 
printing of books to the highest degree of perfection before the 
printing of anything but Buddhist sacred literature was at- 
tempted. The great mass of printed literature found in Central 
Asia continuing up to the time of the Mongol Conquest is almost 
exclusively religious, consisting of Buddhist pictures and Bud- 
dhist books. The printing that was going on in Egypt through the 
time of the Crusades consists of verses from the Koran and of 
prayers. The block printers of Europe produced biblical pictures 
and the Poor Man’s Bible, while Gutenberg printed the Bible it- 
self. And in the nineteenth century the languages of Africa and 
the islands of the sea have been reduced to writing and to printed 
form almost wholly by missionaries for the purpose of printing the 
scriptures. Even in China herself after the use of movable type 
had been almost forgotten, it was missionaries who re-introduced 
them to the land of their birth. 


. RT is not the only expression of human genius that has been 


18 THE BACKGROUND [Pret 


If we expect then to find a strong religious impulse back of the 
invention of printing in China, we shall not be disappointed. The 
time when all sorts of experiments were being tried in various 
forms of reduplication—experiments that finally led the way to 
printing—was the one strongly religious period in Chinese history. 
Under the powerful Han Dynasty that ruled China for two cen- 
turies before and two centuries after Christ, men had not felt so 
strongly the need of religion. Reverence for the masters of the 
classical age just gone by seemed to be enough. True, there are 
records of Buddhism in China during the first century of our era, 
but so long as the united empire remained, the new religion made 
rather slow progress. About the beginning of the third century 
however the Han Empire broke up, and four hundred years of 
anarchy set in, corresponding to the Dark Ages in Europe, and 
caused by that same restlessness among the populations of Cen- 
tral Asia that spread such terror in Europe. For four centuries 
war was chronic, civil war and war with the northern barbarians. 
This age of anarchy may be roughly divided into the time of the 
Three Kingdoms, when three warring Chinese Dynasties strove 
for the mastery; the Tsin Dynasty, when China was again rather 
weakly united and fighting a losing battle against the barbarians 
on the north; and the period of division between North and South, 
when north China was in the hands of various Tartar dynasties. 
During this time literature went backward, and the settled, rather 
static culture of the Han times was broken up. It was no time for 
the conservative virtues of Confucian society. A religion that 
offered a way of escape from this sinful, distressed world had more 
chance. Through the four centuries Buddhism steadily advanced. 
Everywhere, wherever there was an especially beautiful spot or a 
location hallowed by some sacred memory, a temple or a pagoda 
was built, and the religious life, the life of retirement from the 
world, came to be the ideal of an ever increasing multitude. A 
number of the pagodas of this period are still standing—among 
the oldest monuments we have of China’s Buddhism. The age of 
anarchy, especially its last century, was also an age of faith. 





A METAL STAMP FOR MAK- 
ING FIGURES OF BUDDHA, 
MARKING THE TRANSITION 
BETWEEN THE SEAL AND 
DBs UO CKke PRN 


(Height 6 cm.) 


Museum fiir V élkerkunde. 





FRAGMENT OF A ROLL OF THIN PAPER WITH STAMPED BUDDHAS, 
showing the Buddhist fondness for reduplication 


Such rolls and fragments have been found in various parts of Turkestan 
in great quantities by British, French, German and Japanese expeditions 
(15.5 X 22 cm.) 


Museum fiir V olkerkunde. 


Cu. IV] BUDDHISM AND PRINTING 19 


With Buddhism came art. Not that all Chinese art is of Bud- 
dhist origin, as has sometimes been claimed. There was an art of 
purely Chinese growth, that formed the foundation for the de- 
velopment of this and the succeeding age. But it was the new life 
that came in with Buddhism which touched that old art and made 
it great. All through the dark ages, while literature languished, 
art grew. For the “barbarians” who ravaged China were not the 
rude hordes of Attila. They had become strong Buddhists, and, as 
Buddhists, were the inheritors of that Greco-Indian art which 
had grown up in the wake of Alexander’s armies. Ku K’ai-chih, 
the father of Chinese painting, lived in the fourth century. 
Through the fifth and sixth centuries most of the little dynasties 
that strove for the mastery have more names of artists recorded 
than they have years to their credit. The painters were in the 
Chinese South rather than in the Tartar North. Their art was 
Chinese. But it was the new religion, pouring in through the 
North and seen first in the sculptures of Northern Wei, that 
transfused it and gave it new life. Soon after the establishment of 
the T’ang Dynasty, Chinese art entered upon its greatest, most 
creative period. With religion had come art. With religion and 
art came the impulse to print. 


Bie ee 
cat eit 
| hey at nay { a ne 





BAR Delt 


BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA 


es 


FAR) 
7, ee ae, . 
7 ia? aie 


sak ! 


haa 





GHAPTERGY. 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA, 
THE INK, AND THE METHOD USED 


the time when typography was invented, and considers 

block printing as merely an important step in preparation. 
The Far East reckons the invention of printing from the time 
when block printing began, and considers movable type as rather 
an unimportant later addition. This distinction lies in the dif- 
ference between ideograph and alphabet. The writing of the 
languages of Europe is based on an alphabet: for them the inven- 
tion of typography is fhe invention of printing. The writing of the 
languages of the Far East is based on some forty thousand separ- 
ate symbols: for them, until the large wholesale printing of re- 
cent years, movable type have seldom been practical or econom- 
ical. For any land the invention of printing is the invention of 
that form of printing which transforms the education and culture 
of the nation. China invented movable type, Korea and Japan 
made great use of them—all glory to the courage of the inventors 
who applied typography to a language of forty thousand signs 
when it had not yet been applied to an alphabet. But the printing 
on which the Renaissance of the Sung era was based, the printing 
which both in quality and quantity has always been preéminent 
in the Far East, is printing from wooden blocks. The invention of 
xylography then or block printing is the truly significant form of 
the invention for China. 

Block printing in Europe was always a more or less rude art 
as it was at first in China, an art down among the common peo- 
ple, that won scant attention from scholars. When the finer work 
of Gutenberg appeared, the ruder art naturally came to an end. 


In China early block printing was equally rude. It was displaced 


| she tn reckons the date of the invention of printing from 


24 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Prat 


however not by type but by a better form of block printing. Féng 
Tao, who a century or more after the beginning of block printing 
improved the art and applied it to new uses, is usually regarded by 
Chinese as the inventor of printing, and holds much the same 
place in Chinese history that Gutenberg holds in that of Europe. 
From his day printing became a fine art. The books of the Sung 
Dynasty have never been surpassed in printing skill. Chinese 
books printed from modern type cannot compare with them. In 
fact one reason why movable type never succeeded in displacing 
the block book is Chinese love of calligraphy as a fine art. In the 
making of pictures too the wood-engraver’s art has been carried 
to a very high degree of perfection, especially in Japan.! The 
invention of printing from wooden blocks was therefore the 
invention of printing in China. It is the invention that by 
quantity production has largely transformed China’s culture. 
It is the invention that in its quality has produced China’s 
finest books. 


A necessary pre-requisite for printing is ink. De Vinne in his 
Invention of Printing has pointed out how large a part the dis- 
covery of an oily ink played in preparing the way for Gutenberg’s 
invention.? In the same manner the way was prepared for the 
invention of block printing in China by the use of an ink which is 
known in English as “India ink,” but is described more accu- 
rately by the French word, encre de Chine. During the classical 
period and up through the Han Dynasty this ink was apparently 
unknown, its place being taken bya material called ¢s’7 or lacquer.’ 
The invention of a true ink from lamp black,‘ such as has been 
used ever since in China both for writing and for printing, 
has been ascribed by Chinese writers to a man named Wei Tang, 
who lived in the fourth or fifth century of our era.’ Although 
there have been many improvements and fancy inks described, - 
especially by Sung Dynasty writers, there has apparently been 





CHINESE WRITING 


Showing the ink stick and the stone on which it is 
rubbed and moistened 


Schreib und Buchwesen. 


“UISINYING PUN GIddyIy 


MYOM LV WHLINIYd AOOTH YSHNIHO V 


HSOUd V HLIM ONIPAENYS ONILNIYd YOu 
Ad NOISSHUdWI AHL ONIAVL ALV1Id FHL dO ONIXANI AHL 





Cu. V] INK as 


little change since Wei Tang’s time in the main constituents of the 
ink ordinarily used. 

This ink is made by placing a number of well lighted wicks in a 
vessel full of oil, while over this is placed a dome or funnel-like 
cover of iron. When this is well coated with lamp black, the lamp 
black is brushed off and collected on paper. It is then well mixed 
in a mortar with a solution of gum or gluten, and, when reduced to 
the consistency of paste, it is put into little moulds. The best ink 
is produced from the burning of particular oils, but the common 
and cheaper kinds are produced from fir wood.* This ink is sold 
in sticks or elongated cubes. To prepare it for writing, it is rubbed 
in water on a smooth ink stone. 

Chinese ink is excellent for printing from wooden blocks. It 
makes a clean neat impression and is peculiarly indelible—so in- 
delible in fact that on certain blocks of paper found in Central 
Asia, that have lain so long under water as to become petrified, 
the writing is still clearly legible. 

The ink used in block printing, whether in China, in Central 
Asia, in Egypt? or in Europe, is practically uniform. The 
makers of the primitive block prints of Europe were not so accus- 
tomed to the making of this sort of ink, and most of their work has 
faded into a sort of brown, but the essential elements are the 
same. Whether this uniformity of ink indicates a line of connec- 
tion, or whether it indicates merely that block printers everywhere 
used the ink that would make a clear impression, it is too early as 
yet to determine. 

On the other hand, Chinese ink is not satisfactory for taking 
impressions from metal. It stands in globules on the metal sur- 
face and makes a rough impression. The first typographers of 
Europe, faced with this problem, solved it by using an ink whose 
pigment was dissolved in oil—after the analogy of the early oil 
painters. China also experimented with printing from metal 
blocks, and in Korea printing with metal type was done on an 
extensive scale. It seems probable that there too the use of an oily 
ink for printing from metal must have been discovered, though no 


26 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA EProit 


evidence of such use has yet been found. For use with wooden 
blocks—which constituted the great bulk of all China’s printing— 
Chinese ink was eminently satisfactory. 


There is no indication that the method of block printing has 
greatly changed through its long history. A description of the 
art as it is now carried on will give some idea what block printing 
in China means and has meant at least for the past thousand 
years—since the time of Féng Tao. 

The material used is generally pear wood. The wooden plate or 
block, of a thickness calculated to give it sufficient strength, is 
finely planed and squared to the shape and dimensions of two 
pages. The surface is then rubbed over with a paste or size, occa- 
sionally made from boiled rice, which renders it quite smooth and 
at the same time softens and otherwise prepares it for the reception 
of the characters. The future pages which have been finely tran- 
scribed by a professional person on thin transparent paper, are 
delivered to the block cutter, who, while the above mentioned 
application is still wet, unites them to the block so that they 
adhere; but in an inverted position, the thinness of the paper dis- 
playing the writing perfectly through the back. This paper being 
subsequently rubbed off, a clear impression in ink of the inverted 
writing still remains on the wood. The workman then with his 
sharp graver cuts away with extraordinary neatness and despatch 
all that portion of the wooden surface which is not covered by the 
ink, leaving the characters in fairly high relief. Any slight error 
may be corrected, as in our woodcuts, by inserting small pieces of 
wood. But the process is on the whole so cheap and expeditious 
that it is generally easier to replane the block and cut it again; for 
this mode of taking the impression renders the thickness of the 
block an immaterial point. Strictly speaking, the press of China 
would be a misnomer, as no press whatever is used in their print- 
ing. The thin paper receives the impression with a gentle contact, 


Cu. V] THE METHOD 27 


and a harder pressure would break through it. The printer holds 
in his right hand two brushes at the opposite extremities of the 
same handle; with one he inks the face of the characters, and, the 
paper being then laid on the block, he runs the dry brush over it 
so as to take the impression. This is done with such expedition 
that one man can take off a couple of thousand copies in a day. 
Sometimes the work is divided, one man inking the block, another 
taking the impression. The paper, being so thin and transparent, 
is printed on one side only and each printed sheet (consisting of 
two pages) is folded back, so as to bring the blank sides in inward 
contact. The fold is thus at the outer edge of the book and the 
sheets are stitched together at the other.® 

This is the form of printing on which the development of culture 
in the Far East for the past thousand years is based. It is this 
printing that will be considered in the next chapters. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE BEGINNINGS OF BLOCK PRINTING IN THE 
BUDDHIST MONASTERIES OF CHINA 


HE period of the T’ang Dynasty (618-g07)—the period 
during which Chinese printing had its birth—was one of 


the most glorious in the history of China. The four cen- 
turies of disunion and weakness—China’s Dark Ages—which 
were roughly contemporary with the Dark Ages of Europe—had 
been brought to an end some thirty years before the T’ang era 
commenced, and under the first emperors of the new dynasty— 
during the seventh century and the early part of the eighth—the 
ancient glory of the empire was revived and enhanced. Not only 
China itself, but Tibet, East Turkestan, Korea and a large part of 
Indo-China were at one time or another brought under the control 
of the court at Si-an-fu, while armies were sent over the passes of 
the Himalayas into Kashmir against certain Indian states and 
over the T’ien Shan range into the region of Samarkand against 
the rising power of the Arabs. The early T’ang emperors of the 
century or more before Charlemagne did in China much the same 
work that Charlemagne did in Europe in restoring the old Empire 
on a new basis and bringing to an end the long era of chaos and dis- 
order. But the chaos of China’s Dark Ages had never been so 
complete as that of Europe, and classical civilization was first re- 
stored, then surpassed, far more quickly than in the western world. 
The early emperors of the T’ang Dynasty were great patrons of 
literature, of art and of religion, and ruled over a people whose 
mental vision was rapidly expanding. Under T’ai Tsung (627- 
649), a library was erected at the capital which contained two 
hundred thousand volumes. At the same time China’s attainment 
in the domain of painting was rapidly approaching its high water 
mark. 


Cu. VI] BEGINNINGS IN CHINA 29 


For impartiality in religious toleration, T’ai Tsung and his 
immediate followers have seldom been surpassed in history. 
While themselves leaning toward Taoism, and considering their 
family to be of the lineage of Lao-tzu, they were liberal patrons of 
Confucian scholarship, and welcomed with open hand every for- 
eign faith. Within the space of thirty years, in the early part of 
the seventh century, the court at Si-an-fu had the opportunity to 
welcome the first Christian missionaries, to give refuge to the de- 
posed king of Persia and his Mazdean priests, to do honor to 
Hsiian Tsang, the greatest of all the apostles of Chinese Bud- 
dhism, returning from India to give new impetus to the Buddhist 
faith, and finally to receive the first missionaries of Islam. All re- 
ceived the heartiest welcome. All propagated their respective 
faiths with the emperor’s favor and help. Contact with men of 
many lands and of varied opinions produced an alertness, a re- 
newing of youth in the land, such as China had never before 
known. Of all these faiths, it was Buddhism that took deep 
root, and it was Buddhism that gave to the world the art of 
printing. 

This Augustan age lasted for more than a century. It culmin- 
ated in the reign of Ming Huang (712-756) in whose time the 
Hanlin Academy was founded, and about whose court gathered 
such men as Li Po and Tu Fu, Wu Tao-tzt and Wang Wei, the 
greatest poets and the greatest artists whom China in all her long 
history has known, 

During this golden age of Chinese genius, a great variety of de- 
vices was being evolved in the Buddhist monasteries of China for 
the reduplication of sacred books and texts—an activity that 
reached its climax in block printing some time before the end of 
the “golden age.” 

This activity in devising methods of reduplication can best be 
studied from the finds of Tun-huang and those of Turfan, the two 
places where the manuscript records of early Buddhism on the 
borders of China have been preserved.! Here are found not only 
rubbings from stone inscriptions, but also stencils and pounces, 


30 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA Piaget 


printed textiles, seals and seal impressions, and a great profusion 
of little stamped figures of Buddha, all of which led the way di- 
rectly to the art of the block printer. 

The rubbing from stone was in the main the Confucian prepar- 
ation for printing. But discoveries at Tun-huang show that the 
Buddhists used the device too and by means of it printed one of 
their favorite scriptures, the Diamond Sutra.? 

The stencil or pounce was a means of reduplication of which the 
Buddhist monasteries were especially fond. Several of these 
paper stencils have been found, with large heads of Buddha first 
drawn with a brush, then outlined with needle pricks like a modern 
embroidery transfer pattern.? Among the finds are also stencilled 
pictures—on paper, on silk and on plastered walls. 

Printed textiles! appear in considerable number at Tun-huang. 
These are sometimes in two colors, sometimes in several. The de- 
signs are all conventional and non-religious, an entire contrast to 
all other early printing and pre-printing in the Far East. Conven- 
tionalized animal designs—horses, deer and ducks—are popular. 
There is also one example of design-printing on paper*—it looks 
like heavy modern wall paper with dark blue geometric design. 

Small stamped figures of Buddha mark the transition from the 
seal impression to the wood cut. Thousands upon thousands of 
these stamped impressions have been found at Tun-huang, at 
Turfan and at other places in Turkestan. Sometimes they appear 
at the head of each column of a manuscript. Sometimes great 
rolls are filled with them—one such roll in the British Museum is 
seventeen feet long and contains four hundred and sixty-eight 
impressions of the same stamp. The only difference between these 
Buddha figures and true wood cuts, other than the primitive work- 
manship shown, is that the impressions are very small, and hence 
were evidently made by hand pressure like the impressions from 
seals. The stamps found have handles for this purpose.?- When 
the idea occurred to some inventive genius to turn his stamp up- 
side down, lay the paper on it and rub it with a brush,® the way 
was open for making impressions of any size desired, and the way 





A PAPER STENCIL OR POUNCE 


One of the earliest devices for reduplication. The lines in the picture are 

pierced with fine pin pricks. Pictures, made by means of such pounces, have 

been found both in the Turfan region and at Tun-huang,—some on paper, 
some on silk, and some on plastered walls 


(14 X 9.9 cm.) 


Museum fiir Volkerkunde. 





Cu. VI] BEGINNINGS IN CHINA 31 


was open also for such improvement of technique as made the new 
invention a force in the advancement of civilization. But first it 
seems to have brought about only the making of better Buddha 
figures. One roll at London, though similar in other respects to 
the others, was evidently made not by stamping but by rubbing, 
as it shows much larger and better Buddha impressions.° A per- 
fected woodcut in the Louvre shows a still further advance—a 
number of Buddha-figures in concentric circles of varying form 
and all made from one block.!° 

Such are some of the steps—rubbing from stone, printed silk, 
stencil, seal, and stamp—that were leading at the same time 
toward the block print. All these objects have been found in 
Buddhist monasteries, and back of all, or most of them, lies that 
duplicating impulse that has always been a characteristic of 
Buddhism. That these actual objects found at Tun-huang and 
Turfan are earlier than the first block books is by no means cer- 
tain. None bear clear indication of date except one stone rubbing 
and!! one stamp.” But there is every indication that those which 
are not themselves earlier than the first block printing, at least 
represent survivals of earlier and more primitive processes. 

The exact date at which true block printing began is shrouded 
in mystery. A supposed reference to printing as having taken 
place under the emperor Wén Ti in 593, before the beginning of 
the T’ang Dynasty—a statement that has found its way into 
almost everything that has been written in European languages 
on the subject of Chinese printing—is apparently based on an 
error by a Chinese writer of the sixteenth century." The difficulty 
of dating the beginning of block printing is enhanced by the fact 
that the evolution of the art was so gradual as to be almost imper- 
ceptible. The earliest well-defined block print extant dates from 
770 and comes from Japan. The earliest printed book comes from 
China and is dated 868. But that printed book is a highly de- 
veloped product. It is evident that the feverish activity in devising 
new ways of reduplication that was going on in the Buddhist mon- 
asteries of China before this time must have culminated in some 


32 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Pratt 


sort of block printing before 770, and long enough before that date 
to have been by that time carried across to Japan. Perhaps the 
nearest approach to an approximate date that can be given would 
be the reign of Ming Huang (712-756), the time when China’s 
national greatness and China’s cultural achievement reached their 
height. 

The reign of Ming Huang ended in a disastrous revolution. The 
glories of the T’ang Dynasty from that time began to fade. The 
policy of perfect toleration for all religious faiths that marked the 
reigns of T’ai Tsung and Ming Huang was abandoned, and in its 
stead there grew up a policy of persecution of foreign faiths, in- 
cluding Buddhism. This persecution culminated in the famous 
edict of 845, through which forty-six hundred Buddhist temples 
were destroyed and two hundred and sixty thousand Buddhist 
monks and nuns forced to return to lay life.“ It is owing to this 
destruction of temples, as well as the civil wars of the last century 
of the T’ang Dynasty, that most of the great works of art of the 
T’ang period have perished. It is doubtless due to the same cause 
that no Chinese printing earlier than the Diamond Sutra of 868 
has survived, and that for the earliest extant block prints it is 
necessary to turn to Japan. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE EMPRESS SHOTOKU OF JAPAN AND HER 
MILLION PRINTED CHARMS 
C. A.D. 770 


printed charms, Japan had been undergoing a process of 

complete transformation under the influence of China.! It 
was a period similar to that which Japan passed through during 
the latter half of the nineteenth century, except that China was 
the model instead of the West. A steady succession of Buddhist 
missionaries from China poured into Japan, and a steady succes- 
sion of Japanese students went to China for study and on their 
return brought about sweeping changes in the customs of their 
native land, bringing Japan gradually abreast of what was then 
the world’s most cultured country. In 701 the annual celebration 
in honor of Confucius began, and in 708 the first mint was estab- 
lished for the making of coins in Japan. In 735 a Chinese scholar 
became head of the newly established university at Nara, Japan’s 
new capital, which was seeking in every way to mould itself after 
the pattern of the Chinese capital at Si-an-fu. In the same year 
Kibi-no-mabi returned from Si-an-fu after nineteen years of 
study, and, entering into the service of the government, intro- 
duced all sorts of Chinese customs. To him is ascribed the inven- 
tion of Kata-kana, the Japanese syllabary or script. He was the 
tutor of the empress Shotoku, by whose order the first recorded 
block printing was done. 

A recent Japanese writer has given the following account of the 
zeal with which Japan was at this time adopting Chinese ways: 
“During the eighth and ninth centuries there was scarcely any- 
thing good in Si-an-fu, the great T’ang capital, that was not in- 
troduced into Japan or copied by the Japanese in their capital at 


NOR a century and a half before the making of the first block 


34 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Pr. II 


Nara sooner or later. If the court buildings at Si-an-fu were 
painted red, so were those at Nara. If a temple was built and 
supported by the Chinese government in each province, so must 
it be in Japan. If the birthday of the Chinese emperor was ob- 
served as a national holiday, so was it here. If the nobles and the 
upper class in the Chinese capital played football, it was soon 
imitated by the Japanese aristocracy in Nara. . . . We can 
trace all this back to the Chinese origin of Japanese Buddhism.’” 

In Japan as in China, block printing was preceded by the use of 
seals. As early as the year 629 reference is made in the Nihongi 
to the imperial seal.? In 704 official seals for the provinces were 
established, and it was stated that they were to be two sun square 
(a little more than two inches). In 739 a seal of the same size 
was granted to the Ise shrine. These seals without doubt followed 
the fashion that was already in use in China and were used for 
making impressions with ink. That some of them, at least, were 
made of wood is indicated by the statement in the Nihongi that in 
692 the office of the Shinto cult gave a wooden seal to the empress. 

Japan, the country that has never been conquered, is remarkable 
for the careful way in which ancient antiquities have been pre- 
served. This is particularly true of the town of Nara, where the 
capital was established from 710 to 784, and where a large variety 
of objects from this ““Nara Period” have been kept. 

Among the precious objects preserved at Nara are a number of 
pieces of printed silk fabric which were apparently made by the 
use of wooden blocks. The patterns include plants, flowers, willow 
trees, pheasants, small birds and butterflies. Two of the pieces of 
silk have the date printed into the design—dates corresponding to 
the years 734 and 740.° Printed textiles * are mentioned in the 
Shoku Nihongi 7 under the date of 743. 

Armor belts of leather with designs in blue, red and purple dye 
printed upon the leather, were produced at various times in the 
provinces of Hisen and Higo in the southern island of Kiushu, and 
some of them have been preserved. One is dated the eighth month 
of the twelfth year of the period Tempyo, which corresponds to 


Cu. VII] BEGINNINGS IN JAPAN 35 


740. It is even more close to being a true block print than are the 
textiles, for the printing includes not only design but also a picture 
of the divinity Fudo and a number of words in Chinese and San- 
skrit as well as the date. 

During the whole of the Nara period (710-784) the control of the 
Buddhist hierarchy over the affairs of the empire was very strong. 
The resources of the state were drained for the casting in 732 of 
the forty-nine ton bell—the fourth in size in the world—and for 
the erection in the years 735-749 of the great bronze statue of 
Buddha at Nara, weighing over five hundred and fifty tons and 
covered with fifty pounds of gold. The priest Gembo, who re- 
turned from China in 736 after a nineteen years’ stay, and who 
brought back with him five thousand Buddhist books and many 
holy images, had a large share in managing the affairs of state until 
his death in 746. But it was under the empress Shotoku, who 
reigned, with interruptions, from 748 to 769, that priestly control 
reached its climax. This empress, remembering the terrible small- 
pox epidemic of 735-737, kept a hundred and sixteen priests at- 
tached to her court for the driving out of disease demons, in addi- 
tion to those employed for other purposes. Dokyo, the head of the 
Buddhist priesthood, was her chief physician and adviser and had 
a controlling voice in all state decisions. He was emperor in 
everything but name, was even given several of the titles usually 
reserved for the emperor, and was lodged in the palace. 

To the zeal for Buddhism of the Empress Shotoku, the world 
owes its first certain and clearly attested record of printing with 
wooden blocks upon paper.’ The empress ordered the printing 
of one million charms to be placed in a million tiny wooden 
pagodas, and some time about the year 770 the work was finished 
and the pagodas and the charms distributed.'? This event, so 
important in the history of the world, rests fortunately on as clear 
evidence as any event in early Japanese history. It is described 
both in the dynastic annals and in the records of the temple where 
many of the prints were deposited; and, more than that, a number 
of the original prints are still extant. 


36 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Pratl 


The account in the official history, the Shoku Nihongi," is as 
follows: “In the fourth month of the year 770,'° after the eight 
years of civil war had been brought to an end, the empress made a 
vow and ordered the production of one million three-storey 
pagodas, four and a half inches high and three and a half inches in 
diameter at the base. Within these were to be placed the following 
dharani charms [here follow the names of the six charms]. When 
this work was finished, they were distributed among various tem- 
ples.” The record in one of the temples” is more explicit with 
regard to the means by which the charms were made: “In the 
year 76719 there were built two small halls for pagodas on the east 
and west sides of the temple. . . . There were made one million 
pagodas, which were divided among the following ten temples 
[names of the temples]. In each was preserved a charm (dharani) 
from the Muku o-k6 Sutra in block print.” 

Not only have we these two clear contemporary accounts of the 
printing of a million charms. We have also the charms themselves. 
A number of the original impressions are preserved in the Ho- 
riu-zi monastery in the province of Yamato, together with the 
little pagodas in which they were contained. The British Museum 
also has in its possession three charms and the museum at Leipsic 
one. The charms are about eighteen inches long by two wide. 
Each one contains about thirty columns of five characters each. 
They are not all alike, as six different charms were printed." 
Two different kinds of paper were used, one thick and of a woolly 
texture, the other thinner and harder, with a smooth surface, 
which did not absorb the ink quite so readily. All the charms on 
both kinds of paper are brown with age. Whether the blocks used 
were of wood or of metal is still uncertain," but they were prob- 
ably of wood. 

The text of these earliest block prints and of the whole Sutra 
from which they are taken indicates clearly the incentive that was 
back of their production, and sheds light on the powerful impulse _ 
that Buddhism gave to early printing. This Buddhist Classic, 
known in Sanskrit as the Vimala Nirbhasa Sutra," consists of six 


Cu. VII] BEGINNINGS IN JAPAN 37 


sections, each of which in turn contains a narrative portion and a 
charm, the narrative portion indicating the use of the charm. 
When in 705 the Sutra was translated into Chinese by Mi T’o- 
shan—sixty years before the printing of the charms in Japan— 
only the narrative portions were translated. The charms were 
merely transliterated, the Sanskrit sounds being represented as 
nearly as possible by Chinese characters. It is these Sanskrit 
charms in Chinese characters that were printed and rolled up and 
placed in the wooden pagodas. A small section from the narrative 
portion of the Sutra, which forms as it were the introduction to the 
charms, is enough to indicate how this printing naturally fitted 
into the Buddhist scheme of salvation: “A Brahmin who was sick 
went to visit a seer in a garden. The seer said, ‘You must die in 
seven days.’ So he went to Buddha, pleading that Buddha would 
save him, and offering to become his disciple. Buddha said to him, 
‘In a certain city a pagoda is fallen. You must go and repair it, 
then write a dharani (charm) and place it there. The reading of 
this charm will lengthen your life now and later bring you to Par- 
adise.’ The disciples of Buddha then asked him wherein the power 
of the dharani charm lay. The Buddha said ‘Whoever wishes to 
gain power from the dharani must write seventy-seven copies and 
place them in a pagoda. This pagoda must then be honored with 
sacrifice. But one can also make seventy-seven pagodas of clay to 
hold the dharani and place one in each. This will save the life of 
him who thus makes and honors the pagodas, and his sins will be 
forgiven. Such is the method of the use of the dharant. . 

The size of the pagodas shall be from an inch to a cubit in height 
or yet ten feet. From these pagodas, if the heart is set at rest by 
contemplation, shall come forth a wonderful perfume.’ The 
Boddhisattva said, ‘. . . I will speak of the impressing of the 
law of the dharani upon the heart. This dharani is spoken by the 
nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand Boddhisattvas, and he 
who repeats it with all his heart shall have his sins forgiven. . 

So shall ninety-nine copies be made of each of these dharant, and 


they shall be placed within the pagodas. . . . These shall be 


38 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Pratl 


honored with offerings and incense and flowers and there shall be 
a procession around them seven times while the dharani is recited. 
Then will great salvation be wrought.’ ”’ 

In the face of the discrepancy in numbers between the directions 
given by Buddha and by the Boddhisattva, the empress evidently 
tried to be on the safe side and ensure long life by ordering a 
million copies of the charm—and by so doing, she introduced 
printing to the world. The immediate purpose of her project 
failed, for she died about the time the pagodas were distributed, 
but the by-product of her act became one of the world’s greatest 
civilizing forces. It is typical of the international character which 
printing has always possessed that this first printing project was 
in an Indian language in Chinese character and carried out in 
Japan. 

In 782, thirteen years after the empress’ death, the great - 
emperor Kwammu moved the capital away from Nara in order to 
escape the domination of the Buddhist hierarchy, and the period 
of the domination of the state by the church was at an end. For 
two hundred years Japanese history is silent on the subject of 
printing—till the year 987, when it entered Japan once more as 
an importation from China. But meanwhile printing in China 
itself had undergone a transformation. 


“UUNISNAY YStAg 


(‘wa gt x 9) 
urewrr [Qs wey3 jo Aueur asaya ‘saduraz snowea ul sey Aq pagisodap puv “sazovrvyo asoulyy Ul pur 
adensury warysueg ayy ut ‘oLL avad ay} ynoqe urdef yo nyoloys ssoudury oy} Aq pajutid stwureyo asryppng 


ONILNIYd LSAGTO §S GTYOM AHL 


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“DIPULdIy SUAS 


punoj sva “ggg Jo vsjng puowricy oy} ‘yoo pazutid ysarjiva 9y3 a19Y AA 


ONVOH-NOL LV SVHGCdGNd GNVSNOHL AHL 40 SYAVO AHL 





CHAPTER VIII 
THE FIRST PRINTED BOOK 
Tue Diamonp Sutra oF 868 


GLANCE at the map of China will show a slender arm of 
Ae province of Kansu—a peninsula, so to speak—extend- 

ing far out into the desert of Turkestan. The historical 
reason for this peninsula of Chinese civilization is the great trade 
route and military road, along which a narrow line of Chinese 
settlements grew up, extending far into the Northwest. Here on 
this “panhandle,” as it would be called if it were in America, lies 
the city of Tun-huang, near which are the Caves of the Thousand 
Buddhas. While in China itself, on account of the climate, very 
few manuscripts of ancient date have been preserved, Eastern 
Turkestan has a climate like that of Egypt which preserves in- 
tact all that is buried beneath its sands. Turkestan is therefore 
one of the world’s great treasure houses of archaeology, and in 
the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, in a region that combines 
the cultural heritage of China with the climate of Turkestan, 
there has been found the greatest store of ancient Chinese manu- 
scripts that has yet been unearthed. 

The setting in which the manuscripts of Tun-huang have been 
found is unique. Cut into the rock in the side of a cliff are a 
very large number of caves, some of which have served con- 
tinuously as Buddhist shrines for more than fifteen hundred years. 
Several of these caves are very large, and two of them contain 
colossal images of Buddha, each ninety feet high. A stone in- 
scription in one of the caves, itself dated a.p. 698, describes the 
founding of this cave colony in the year 366. 

While the whole series of caves is of archeological interest, the 
supreme interest for our study lies in the sealed manuscript 
chamber. This was discovered in the year 1900 by a mendicant 


40 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA Leet 


Taoist priest, who had by begging collected money for the pious 
act of restoring one of the caves to its ancient magnificence, and 
who was actually engaged in beautifying (as he thought) one of 
the early frescoes. In so doing he found that the plaster of a part 
of one of the frescoes was laid on a background not of stone but of 
brick. Removing a bit of the fresco, and cutting into the brick, he 
found behind it a secret walled-up chamber piled high with manu- 
scripts. How Dr. Stein on his visit to Tun-huang seven years later 
learned of the secret chamber, obtained access to it, and finally 
was able to transport a part of its contents to India and to the 
British Museum, is told in a vivid narrative in the second volume 
of Serindia. 

The chamber proved to be about nine feet square and piled 
solid some ten feet high with the precious manuscript rolls. Exam- 
ination showed that the dates ranged from the beginning of the 
fifth century to the end of the tenth.! There is good reason to be- 
lieve that this chamber was walled up about the year 1035, in 
order to prevent its contents falling into the hands of enemies, and 
that it was so effectually sealed that its existence was altogether 
forgotten until it was rediscovered in 1900. The manuscripts 
within were in almost as good condition as if written yesterday, 
though the whole library of fifteen thousand or more books—all 
written on paper—was closed and sealed a century before the first 
introduction of paper into Europe. 

Within this small room were piled 1130 bundles, each carefully 
sewed up in cloth and each containing a dozen or more manuscript 
rolls. Of these Dr. Stein succeeded in purchasing from the Taoist 
priest and in transporting to London some three thousand rolls, 
together with five or six thousand detached pieces and fragments. 
The next year Prof. Pelliot, the famous French sinologist, visited 
the cave and procured for France about an equal number. These 
books are in the main Chinese. There are however many rolls in 
Tibetan and a certain number in Sanskrit, Sogdian, Eastern 
Iranian and Uigur (Turkish), and even a book of selections from 
the Old Testament in Hebrew. 


Cu. VIII] THE FIRST PRINTED BOOK 4I 


It was among the manuscripts of this ancient library, sealed up 
nearly nine hundred years ago, that the world’s oldest printed 
book was found.? This book, which is almost perfectly preserved, 
shows already an advanced technique, behind which there must 
have been a long evolution. It is less crude than any of the Euro- 
pean block printing of pre-Gutenberg days. The book consists of 
six sheets of text and one shorter sheet with woodcut, all neatly 
pasted together so as to form one continuous roll sixteen feet long. 
Not only the excellent technique, but the size of the sheets as 
well, shows that this is no primitive bit of printing like the 
charms from Japan. Each sheet is two and a half feet long by 
nearly a foot wide, indicating the large size of the blocks used. At 
the end, printed into the text, is the statement that the book was 
“printed on May 11, 868, by Wang Chieh, for free general distri- 
bution, in order in deep reverence to perpetuate the memory of 
his parents.” 3 

Of Wang Chieh nothing is known except this statement, which 
tells us that he was the first printer of books of whom the world 
has record. It is possible however to see something of his motive 
in undertaking this printing project. The Diamond Sutra,‘ the 
section of the Buddhist scriptures which appears in this roll, was 
a favorite book with early printers, whether in China, in Japan or 
in Central Asia. It consists of a number of discourses by the 
Buddha to his aged disciple Subhuti on the subject of the non- 
existence of all things. While it is taken up in the main with very 
abstruse teachings, the author has a very high opinion of the im- 
portance of the book that he is writing. Over and over again the 
Buddha is represented as describing to Subhuti the infinite merit 
and rewards to be gained by him who transcribes the book and 
thus spreads abroad its doctrine. “Whatever place,” he says, 
“constitutes a repository for this sacred scripture, there also the 
Lord Buddha may be found.” “If a good disciple whether man 
or woman, in the morning, at noonday and at eventide, sacrificed 
lives innumerable as the sands of the Ganges, and thus without 
intermission throughout infinite ages; and if another disciple, 


42 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Pr. II 


hearing this scripture proclaimed, steadfastly believed it, his 
felicity would be appreciably greater than the other. But how 
much greater must be the felicity of a disciple who transcribes the 
sacred text, . . . and repeats the scripture that others may be 
edified thereby.” ® The transcription of the sacred text of the 
Diamond Sutra became a favorite method of acquiring merit 
among Buddhists, and so it still remains. I have known a Chinese 
student at Columbia University who, on the eve of his coming to 
America, made a vow that, if his mother should be cured of a 
serious illness, he would transcribe five copies of the Diamond 
Sutra. His mother recovered and he fulfilled his vow. It 1s easy 
to imagine the pious delight of Wang Chieh in the new invention 
that enabled him to transcribe not five copies but a multitude of 
copies for free general distribution, in order to do honor to his 
parents. 

The printing of books did not however immediately supersede 
the making of manuscripts, even among the Buddhists. For 
though the manuscripts of the Tun-huang cave did not come to 
an end for nearly a century and a half after the time of the 
Diamond Sutra, there were found among the great mass of manu- 
script rolls only three other printed books in roll form ® and one 
small folded book. 

The making of single-page block prints would seem to have pro- 
gressed rather more rapidly than the making of books, judging 
from the fact that several score of these were found at Tun-huang. 
They are of various forms, but all religious. The larger number 
are either votive offerings or charms. The votive offerings are the 
more numerous and include many duplicates. While it was evi- 
dently the custom for people of wealth to present paintings at the 
shrine in payment of vows, and many of these paintings have been 
preserved, each one with a picture of the donor at the base, it 
seems that those who could not afford a painting wanted some- 
thing that could be produced more cheaply—and so these prints 
came into being. They are usually about a foot high by seven or 
eight inches wide. The top half is a picture of the Goddess of 





THE WORLD’S OLDEST PRINTED BOOK—THE DIAMOND SUTRA OF 868 


Printed by Wang Chieh. Found in 1907 by Sir Aurel Stein. The roll is sixteen feet long by one foot wide, 


and is made up of seven sheets pasted together 


British Museum. 


5 6; 


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A BLOCK PRINT PRESENTED IN PAYMENT OF A VOW 
ATONE, OF “THE SHRINES) INS THES CAVES 0 KOeLEE 
THOUSAND BUDDHAS 


Date about 950 
(cr x occem,) 


British Museum. 


Cu. VII] THE FIRST PRINTED BOOK 43 


Mercy or some other divinity. The lower half consists of text, 
usually an ascription of praise. Sometimes the whole sheet ap- 
pears to have been printed from one block; sometimes it is clear 
that the picture and the text are from separate blocks. A few of 
these votive offerings are hand-colored and present an appearance 
strikingly like the early image prints of Europe. Several of them 
still have tabs pasted at the top for hanging them on the wall. 

A number of the prints from Tun-huang are charms, and of 
these there is considerable variety. The text is always Sanskrit or 
a cabalistic script allied to Sanskrit, with some words of explana- 
tion in Chinese. One of them is marked as having power to blot 
out sins—not so far removed in idea from the Latin Indulgence 
which was one of the first things printed by Gutenberg. Akin to 
the charms is a calendar, illustrated by many woodcuts, and con- 
taining full information about lucky and unlucky days. 

One roughly printed little Buddhist sutra is of interest as mark- 
ing the transition to a new form of book. It is not a roll, but a 
tiny folded book, one of the first of its kind. Chinese records tell 
us that books first took the form of rolls when writing on silk be- 
gan, a century or two before Christ, and that this form of book 
continued after the invention of paper and down to the end of the 
T’ang Dynasty, when, under the influence of printing, paged 
books began to appear.’ A transition stage between the roll and 
the stitched book was the folded book, a continuous piece of 
paper like the roll, but folded in pages like a modern railroad time 
table. This little sutra is such a folded book. It consists of eight 
pages. It is printed like all block prints on one side only, then 
folded, and finally has the folds at one edge all pasted together, 
so that it opens quite like a modern book. The feeling of modern- 
ness is enhanced, when one sees the name of the printer and the 
date clearly printed on the inside of the outer sheet. The date is 


949. 

While the Diamond Sutra bears the date of 868, and the three 
other roll books found at Tun-huang have all been assigned with 
a fair degree of probability to the ninth century or the opening 


44 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA iPrall 


decade of the tenth,® those of the single sheets that bear dates, as 
well as the folded book just described and a seven-page charm 
from Paris (excluding duplicates there are altogether nine books 
and sheets bearing dates *) range from 947 to 983. On the other 
hand these sheets are far more primitive than the rolls. This 
fact leads to the suggestion that the books were importations, 
probably from the province of Szechuen, while the single sheets 
were of local manufacture.!° If this is the case, it is not unlikely 
that these votive offerings and charms represent survivals in this 
far western outpost of a form of printing which in China proper 
had already preceded the Diamond Sutra, and that they make it 
possible to reconstruct still further the development that led up 
to the printing of that book. 

Meanwhile from an entirely different set of sources comes docu- 
mentary evidence that parallels the evidence of archeological dis- 
covery. The first ' clear reference to block printing in Chinese 
literature is an account of printed books which were seen by the 
official Liu Pin ” in the province of Szechuen in the year 883, just 
fifteen years after the appearance of the Diamond Sutra. Liu 
Pin accompanied the emperor Hsi Tsung into temporary exile in 
Szechuen during the troubles that were rife during the last years 
of the T’ang Dynasty. His statement reads, “In the summer of 
the year 883, during my three years sojourn with the emperor in 
the province of Shu (Szechuen), I was examining books on the 
south-east side of the imperial residence on behalf of an official 
named Hsiin Hsiu. These books consisted mostly of works on 
divination," portents, dreams and féng-shui, and writings of the 
Chiu-kung “ and Five Planet sects; but there were also some 
‘character books’ * and elementary school books. Most of these 
books were printed with blocks on paper, but they were so 
smeared and blotted that they were not readily legible.” 

This earliest clear description of Chinese printed books brings 
out several important facts. It is evident that printing was con- 
fined to non-canonical works, and in the main to the books of 
the ignorant and the poor, to whom the cheapness of the new 


Cu. VIII] THE FIRST PRINTED BOOK 45 


method appealed. It is also clear that Taoists as well as Buddhists 
were making use of the new art, and that though their work was 
still crude, it had progressed far since the days of the charm-seals 
described in chapter two. 

But “there were also some character books and elementary 
text books.” Here may be seen the beginning of the emergence 
of the art of printing from the realm of Buddhist lore and Taoist 
magic. Not till printing began to emerge into the secular field did 
it find its way into literature, for the Confucian historians—those 
who were chiefly interested in the progress of civilization—had a 
wholesome contempt for what was going on behind the doors of 
monasteries. It is not without significance that Liu Pin was 
usually ignored by Sung and Yiian writers who tried to trace the 
origin of printing, and that when he was quoted, the “‘books of 
divination, dreams and portents’’ were omitted and only the 
“character books and school books” remained. It is these latter 
that prepared the way for the great advance of the next century— 
the printing of the Confucian Classics. 

There are two other early authorities who mention printing in 
the T’ang Dynasty, and both of them, like Liu Pin, locate the 
centre of the industry in the province of Szechuen, then known by 
the name of Shu.!7 Chu I,!8 a careful writer of the Sung Dynasty, 
is authority for the statement, “Inked blocks were first used at 
I-chou !? (Ch’eng-tu) at the end of the T’ang Dynasty.”” The Kwo- 
shih-chih »° confirms this statement, and adds, “‘The books printed 
were usually books on magic art, school books and character 
books.””#! 

Some leaves of a dictionary ” found at Tun-huang are believed 
to have been produced by this early secular printing activity of 
Szechuen. They are not dated, but there are certain indications 
that have led M. Pelliot to assign to them a date of about goo. 
They are almost the only bits of non-Buddhist printing that have 
been found at either Tun-huang or Turfan. 

Although Buddhist printing was already highly developed dur- » 
ing the ninth century, as indicated by the Diamond Sutra, the art 


46 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Pr. II 


of printing had still awakened little interest in the empire at large, 
and as late as 932 it was still confined to two localities, of which 
Szechuen was one. The printing activities of T’ang times made 
little impression upon the Chinese world. Féng Tao, whose pub- 
lication of the Classics occupied the years 932-953, just after the 
T’ang Dynasty came to a close, has almost universally been re- 
garded in China as the inventor of printing. Only a few writers 
have pointed out the earlier printing that formed the foundation 
of this work, and not until the discovery of the Diamond Sutra 
in 1907 was anything definite known of the character of that 
early printing. 


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A TENTH CENTURY WOODCUT FROM TUN-HUANG IN WHICH MANY 

SMALL BUDDHA FIGURES, SUCH AS WERE FORMERLY PRODUCED 

BY METAL OR WOODEN STAMPS, ARE PRINTED TOGETHER FROM 
A SINGLE BLOCK 


(33 x 51 cm.) 


The Louvre. Salle Pelliot. 





THE EVOLUTION OF THE CHINESE BOOK 


Lower right hand corner: The silk roll, which was in use 
in the Han Dynasty, from about B.C. 200 to A.D. 100. 

Lower left hand corner: The paper roll, which was in use 
from the second century to the tenth. 

Above: The folded book, the use of which began in the 
ninth or tenth century, and has continued for Buddhist 
literature down to the present. 

Bottom row, center: The stitched book, introduced proba- 
bly from the west in the tenth or eleventh century, and 
still in general use. Various bindings have been used. 
The binding here shown is wooden boards. 


Schreib und Buchwesen, 


CHAPTER IX 


THE PRINTING OF THE CONFUCIAN CLASSICS 
UNDER FENG TAO 


932-953 


(PERIOD OF THE Five DynastTIEs, 907-960) 


P TO the end of the T’ang Dynasty, the Empress Shotoku 
of Japan had printed a million charms to insure length of 
days, and Wang Chieh had printed the Diamond Sutra 

to honor his parents. This, together with Liu Pin’s record of 

printing in the province of Szechuen, constitutes all that is known 
definitely of block printing up to the beginning of the tenth cen- 
tury. The next great name in this history is that of Féng Tao, who 
as prime minister ordered the printing of the Confucian Classics. 

It is necessary first to see the background of Féng Tao’s work, 
and for that background to turn again to West China, to the 
province of Szechuen. During the whole T’ang Dynasty the cul- 
tural center of gravity in China was rather in the West than in 
the East, as much of the greatness of the empire was due to its 
relations with peoples beyond the western border. The T’ang 
capital was at Ch’ang-an or Si-an-fu in Shensi. The Chinese cul- 
ture which entered Japan was the culture of Si-an-fu, for Japanese 
students, seeking to learn what China had to teach, passed by the 
eastern provinces and studied in the Western Capital. 

As the T’ang Dynasty neared its close, there was a tendency for 
this cultural center to move still farther west. In 881 the emperor, 
pursued by rebels, moved to I-chou, now Ch’eng-tu, the capital 
of Szechuen. Though he resided there only five years, his presence 
gave to the people a feeling that theirs was the imperial city—a 
feeling strengthened by the fact that a new city wall, eight miles 
in circumference, had just been built, with the labor of a hundred 


48 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Prot 


thousand men. It was during the Emperor’s sojourn in I-chou 
(Ch’eng-tu) that Liu Pin saw printed books exposed for sale in 
that city, and described them—the first mention of printing in 
Chinese literature. After the emperor’s return to Si-an-fu, one of 
the generals who had loyally received him in Szechuen, gradually 
made himself more and more master of the western province, until 
in 907, when the T’ang empire fell, he was able to proclaim himself 
independent, and to call his state (which comprised the province 
of Szechuen and certain border districts of surrounding provinces) 
the “Empire of Shu.” 

The history of the rest of China during the next half century, 
known as the period of the Five Dynasties, is a story of constant 
civil war, one dynasty following another in rapid succession at 
Si-an-fu, and each ruling over only a circumscribed area. During 
all this time—except for one short break, from 929 to 934—the 
so-called “Empire of Shu” in the far west remained independent, 
and was the most prosperous, and doubtless also the most highly 
cultured part of China.' 

The history of Szechuen or Shu through this period is important 
to the student of printing for a number of reasons. It was there, 
at I-chou (Ch’eng-tu) the capital, according to certain of the 
earliest authorities, that printing began; it was certainly there that 
non-Buddhist printing began and that printing was first men- 
tioned in literature;? it was probably in Shu that the first official 
printing took place, both the printing of books and the printing 
of paper money;* and, finally, Féng Tao, though regarded by 
later generations as the inventor of printing, himself stated that 
his printing was based on the work that he had seen in Shu. 

When the state of Shu attained its independence in go7, one of 
the first acts of its new ruler was to have the corrected text of the 
Classics (or at least a part of them) engraved on stone in the new 
capital—in imitation of work done by the great emperors of the 
Han and T’ang dynasties. 

The rapid advance of printing from wooden blocks in the state 
of Shu during the next half century is largely due to the efforts of a 


Cu. IX] THE PRINTING OF THE CLASSICS 49 


far-sighted statesman by the name of Wu Chao-i.t Wu’s early 
interest in printing is thus described by a writer of the Sung 
Dynasty: ‘When Wu Chao-i was poor, he wished one day to 
borrow some books from a friend. The friend showed by his look 
that he did not wish to lend them. Wu was grieved and said, 
‘Some day, when I come into a position of power, I shall have 
books cut in blocks, so that all scholars may have the opportunity 
of reading them.’ When later he served the king of Shu as prime 
minister, he fulfilled his promise. This was the beginning of print- 
ing.”’> In other words, this was probably the beginning of official 
printing, undertaken by the state. Another writer tells of Wu’s 
interest in education: ‘‘From the end of the T’ang Dynasty all 
schools had been in ruins. Wu Chao-i of Shu from his own private 
funds contributed a very large sum (lit., millions) to reéstablish 
them. Besides this he petitioned the king to have the Nine Clas- 
sics printed. The king granted his petition. From this time there 
was a literary renaissance in Shu.” ® 

Meanwhile back nearer the center of the country, with their 
capital at Ch’ang-an or Si-an-fu, one dynasty was succeeding 
another on the ruins of the old T’ang empire. The second of these 
so-called “Five Dynasties,” known as Later T’ang, was able to 
gain considerable strength in Central China under the able admin- 
istration of the prime minister Féng Tao—one of those strange 
figures in history who succeed in winning and retaining the good 
will of various persons in spite of the enmity of those persons to 
each other. Under four of the “Five Dynasties” and under seven 
emperors,’ Féng Tao held his position, and thus a semblance at 
least of continuity was attained in the conduct of the empire, for 
each founder of a short-lived dynasty, though killing his predeces- 
sor, Was wise enough to retain his predecessor’s chief adviser. 

In the year 929, near the beginning of Féng Tao’s career, and 
near the beginning of the career of his rival, Wu Chao-i, the cen- 
tral empire in which Féng held authority conquered the state of 
Shu and held it for five years. As the imperial authority was ex- 
tended over that new territory, two things were found in the far 


50 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Prrtt 


western capital that Féng Tao was quick to seize upon and adapt 
to the use of his own growing empire, the Classics engraved in 
stone—hitherto an imperial prerogative—and the new and as yet 
little known process of block printing. That the prime minister 
and his associates quickly saw the necessity of the central empire 
taking over this work from its newly conquered province, is indi- 
cated in the epoch-making memorial of 932, issued just three 
years after Shu was added to the imperial domain and two years 
before it was again lost. 

“During the Han Dynasty,” they wrote in their memorial, 
“Confucian scholars were honored and the Classics were cut in 
stone. . . . In T’ang times also stone inscriptions containing 
the text of the Classics were made in the imperial school.§ Our 
dynasty has too many other things to do and cannot undertake 
such a task as to have stone inscriptions erected. We have seen, 
however, men from Wu ® and Shu who sold books that were 
printed from blocks of wood. There were many different texts, 
but there were among them no orthodox Classics. If the Classics 
could be revised and thus cut in wood and published, it would be 
a very great boon to the study of literature. We, therefore, make 
a memorial to the throne to this effect.” !° 

Printing was evidently the last thing that Féng Tao and his 
associates were interested in. It came as a by-product. Their 
whole interest lay in fixing forever the canon and the correct text 
of the Classics, a prerogative that they felt belonged to them, as 
representations of the real empire, and not to the upstart “em- 
pire” of Shu. They believed that recent scholarship had thrown 
new light on certain questions of textual criticism which rendered 
the text current in Han and T’ang times obsolete, that for this 
reason the whole text needed a thorough searching revision, and 
that their empire must be the one to set the standard. The material 
on which the revised text was to be cut was incidental. ' In fact 
the cutting in wood instead of stone was regarded as a make- 
shift, the impoverished state having no money to cut the text in 
stone as previous dynasties and as the rival state of Shu had done. 


Cu. IX] THE PRINTING OF THE CLASSICS gi 


This emphasis on sound scholarship in getting at the correct 
text is brought out in the emperor’s reply and in the arrange- 
ments that were made for the work. The Kuo-tzti-chien, or 
National Academy, where leading scholars of the empire were 
gathered together, was ordered to select for each one of the Clas- 
sics a commission of five or six specialists in order to revise the 
text. A government board headed by a scholar named Ma Kao 
was appointed to examine and revise the work of these commis- 
sions, ‘‘and since the establishment of the text of the Classics is of 
great importance,” the decree ran, ‘‘an importance not to be com- 
pared with that of all other books, although I have already or- 
dered the National Academy to appoint officers to edit the work, 
yet, because the work is so vast, and I still fear that errors may 
creep in, I order Ma Kao and the men with him (who are all 
great scholars and each one a specialist in the Classics), to make a 
final, exact examination in order that everything may be brought 
to absolute perfection.”” The Academy was then ordered to select 
skilled calligraphers to prepare the final copy which should be fixed 
to the blocks for cutting, and finally to select careful workmen to 
cut the blocks. At the head of the calligraphers, the famous writer 
Li O was chosen, while T’ien Min, as director of the National 
Academy, was appointed to be head of the whole undertaking." 

The work of editing and of printing lasted for twenty-one years, 
twenty-one years of civil war, during which four dynasties, three 
of them founded by Turkish or Uigur adventurers, followed one 
another in rapid succession. But somehow or other Féng Tao 
retained his post as head of the civil administration, while T’ien 
Min and his associates worked steadily on at the task of editing 
and printing the Classics. To those who are acquainted with the 
China of our own day, and have seen government education 
steadily pushing forward in spite of governmental anarchy, it is 
not hard to understand how the National Academy and the vari- 
ous commissions appointed went their quiet way unruffled by the 
storm that was beating about them. 

Several state documents have been preserved indicating the 


52 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Pridl 


progress of the work and the difficulties met. None is of especial 
interest until the final statement made by T’ien Min in 953 in 
presenting to the emperor the completed edition of the Classics 
and their Commentaries # in one hundred and thirty volumes: 
“From the third year of the period Chang-hsin (932),” he de- 
clared, “‘we have been at work on the revision and printing of the 
Nine Classics and their Commentaries. The Classics and their 
Commentaries are so voluminous and come from such an ancient 
time and so many errors have crept in through frequent copying 
that in many cases the original reading has been lost. Our function 
has been to superintend the work of the National Academy and to 
watch over the revision of the books. We have sought in all 
things to find the correct standpoint for fixing the text and to pre- 
pare everything perfectly for printing. Fortunately through the 
favor of your Majesty we have been able to bring the great work 
to completion. Through this work the virtues of peace will be 
spread abroad and the universal doctrine made eternal. We re- 
spectfully submit our finished task.” 

Meanwhile the printers of Szechuen were not inactive. Wu 
Chao-i’s initial work, which had inspired Féng Tao to competition, 
was followed by the printing of at least a part, if not the whole, of 
the Nine Classics. The records of this official printing of the state 
of Shu are very meager, compared with the full records of the work 
of the central empire under Féng Tao, but it is probable that the 
Classics in whole or in part were published in Shu at about the 
same time that they were published in the imperial capital—one 
authority says in the same year." 

Yet with all this printing activity both in Shu and in the central 
empire, the old idea of authentication still clung to that word 
yin, that had meant seal and now meant print. The chief purpose 
of printing was not yet to make literature more accessible to the 
masses, but rather to authenticate the text. For more than a 
century after Féng Tao—up to the year 1064—the private print- 
ing of the Classics was forbidden. All printing must be done by the 
government and must give the orthodox accepted text. 


Cu. IX] THE PRINTING OF THE CLASSICS 53 


Of the Classics printed under Féng Tao’s administration, noth- 
ing of undisputed genuineness has come down to us. There is an 
old edition of the Er-ya in Japan which is marked as “written by 
Li O,” the calligrapher who wrote the copy for Féng Tao’s work. 
While this is probably a Sung Dynasty reprint," it is likely that it 
reproduces fairly faithfully the original and gives an idea what the 
Classics printed by Féng Tao looked like. It isin the form of a 
book with pages but each page conforms closely to the style of the 
pasted sheets of the T’ang manuscript rolls. Each half page con- 
tains eight columns, and each column either sixteen or twenty-one 
characters. 

The printed matter found in the Tun-huang caves and described 
in the preceding chapter comes in the main from just the time that 
Féng Tao was printing the Classics. Of the nine dated specimens 
at London and Paris, six * contain dates ranging from 947 to 950, 
and almost all the Tun-huang prints date from Féng Tao’s cen- 
tury. But this is not Féng Tao’s work. The work of the National 
Academy was Confucian—orthodox—the Tun-huang finds are 
Buddhist. What the Tun-huang finds reveal is that, side by side 
with the official Confucian printing of Féng Tao, which so many 
literary men described, Buddhist printing continued to pursue 
its quiet course, ready to culminate in that great undertaking, the 
printing of the Tripitaka, which ushered in the Sung era, and 
which will be described in the next chapter. 

During Féng Tao’s administration Buddhist printing spread to 
Korea. The first recorded printing in Korea was a popular apo- 
cryphal sutra that was written originally in Chinese, and not, 
like the true sutras, translated from Sanskrit. This bears the 
date 950.17 

The work of Féng Tao and his associates for printing in China 
may be compared to the work of Gutenberg in Europe. There 
had been printing before Gutenberg—block printing certainly 
and very likely experimentation in typography also—but Guten- 
berg’s Bible heralded a new day in the civilization of Europe. In 
the same way there had been printing before Féng Tao, but it 


54 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Past 


was an obscure art that had little effect on the culture of the 
country. Féng Tao’s Classics made printing a power that ushered 
in the Renaissance of the Sung era. It is too much, however, to 
call Féng Tao the inventor. Not only had printing existed before 
his day—and printing which differed very little in technique from 
that which took place under his administration—but also Féng 
Tao had no part, so far as we know, in the technical work. He was 
the prime minister who saw the value of the new invention and 
gave the order to print on a large scale. His name has gone down 
in history as one of China’s great inventors, but his glory should 
be shared with others who did more than he to inaugurate the new 
invention. 


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Nac scurees ooe 


A PRINTED BOOK OF THE SUNG DYNASTY 


of Southern Ch’i. Printed books of the Sung 
aries of China and Japan and in the leading 


re 


From the Dynastic Histories 


Dynasty (g60-1280) 
national libraries of E 


»—History of the Dynasty 


can be found in many private lib 
urope. They are as a rule the mo 


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re usually paged and stitched like modern 


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(Size of double page 40 x 28 cm.) 


and have never been surpassed in technique. They 


Chinese boo 


Collection of George A. Plimpton, New York City. 





CHAPTER X 
THE HIGH TIDE OF CHINESE BLOCK PRINTING 


THE SUNG AND MONGOL DYNASTIES (960-1368) 


NE of the many generals, who had been contending for 
authority during the anarchic period of the Five Dynas- 


ties, succeeded in the year 960 in placing himself on the 
throne and uniting the empire under his sway. This was the be- 
ginning of the Sung Dynasty, a period which rivalled that of the 
T’angs in cultural achievement. The T’ang Dynasty had been a 
time of rapidly extending frontiers, and of contact with the lands 
of the West, a period of freshness and youth, an era of lyric poetry 
and religious faith. The Sung Dynasty, shut out from the West by 
the steadily encroaching nomads, was a time of ripe maturity. 
Lyric poetry gave way to learned prose—great compendiums of 
history, works on natural science and political economy, of a 
character and quality such as neither China nor the West, except 
for a short period in Greece, had ever dreamed of. Religious faith 
gave way to philosophic speculation, and the great systems of 
thought were produced that have dominated China to this day. 
In art the lofty tradition of the earlier period was carried on and 
brought to fruition, so that the greatest and best Chinese paintings 
that are now extant come from the period of the Sungs. 

In invention, what the T’ang period conceived, the Sung era 
put to practical use. The magnetic needle, used in the main in 
earlier times either as a toy or for the location of graves, was 
applied to navigation.! Gunpowder, already known and used for 
fireworks, was during the Sung Dynasty applied to war.? Porce- 
lain was so developed as to become an article of export to Syria 
and Egypt. 

A similar development took place in printing. From an obscure 
Buddhist art at the end of the T’ang Dynasty, it was already mak- 


56 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Pr. II 


ing rapid strides forward during the half century interregnum. 
But as Féng Tao’s Classics were published only seven years before 
the first Sung emperor ascended to the throne, it was not until 
that dynasty had become established that his work bore fruit. 
The printing of the Classics was one of the forces that restored 
Confucian literature and teaching to the place in national and 
popular regard that it had held before the advent of Buddhism, 
and a classical renaissance followed that can only be compared to 
the Renaissance that came in Europe after the re-discovery of its 
classical literature and that there too was aided by the invention 
of printing. This is the reason why Féng Tao’s work has been 
considered of such importance by Chinese historians. Another 
result of the publication of the Classics was an era of large scale 
printing, both public and private, that characterized the whole of 
the Sung Dynasty. 

In quality the block printing of the Sung epoch has never been 
surpassed. The fine workmanship of these artist-craftsmen— 
beautiful calligraphy perfectly reproduced in print—sets a stan- 
dard for all time. The importance of calligraphy to the book- 
lovers of the day is shown by the fact that in almost all Sung 
editions the name of the calligrapher who prepared the copy is 
recorded in the colophon along with those of the author and the 
printer. This also was a time of improvements in the technique of 
printing of which the most noteworthy was the invention of mov- 
able type. But that new development must be reserved for dis- 
cussion in a later chapter. 

The advent of the Sung Dynasty caused little change in the 
printing administration that had been organized by Féng Tao. 
The National Academy was still in charge of the work. The first 
books published by the government were further commentaries 
on the Classics, literary compendiums and classical dictionaries.‘ 
In the order for the printing of one of these earliest works, it is 
expressly stated that the arrangements as to paper, ink and ex- 
pense should be the same as in the case of the Nine Classics. The 
printing of this work was in charge of a man from Szechuen.’ The 


Cu.X] | SUNG AND MONGOL DYNASTIES 57 


next important work was a voluminous commentary on the Clas- 
sics in a hundred and eighty volumes,’ containing at the end a page 
of “errata,” in which ninety-four misprints were corrected. 

The conquest of Szechuen (Shu) in 965 brought the printing 
of that province and of the central empire together. Wu Chao-i, 
who had been for years the patron of printing in Shu, and who had 
had more than any other the vision to see the possibilities of the 
new art in making literature available to the common people, was 
found by the conquerors, an old man, living in retirement and ob- 
scurity. He was brought with great honor to the imperial capital, 
his printing blocks were searched out and again used under his 
direction, and from that day the printing that had circulated in 
Shu became current throughout the empire.” 

By the end of the tenth century the printing of the great dy- 
nastic histories had started. This was a monumental work in 
many hundred volumes and occupied nearly seventy years. Like 
the printing of the Classics it was entrusted to the National 
Academy.$ 

From 1063 little is heard of the National Academy till after the 
conquest of North China by the Kin Tartars and the removal of 
the capital to Hangchow. This was a time of constant warfare and 
frequent invasion. In 1139, a dozen years after the setting up of 
the capital at Hangchow, a new edition of the Nine Classics from 
the old plates was ordered by the emperor. As some of the plates 
were lost, the work was still unfinished in 1157. An order was 
then issued for the preparation of new. plates where needed, and 
the edition was soon complete. From one authority it seems that 
a part at least of the dynastic histories was printed at the same 
time.® 

Meanwhile it is clear that private printing was gaining ground 
and spreading through the empire. Although the only records of 
this private printing are the title pages of the books that have 
been preserved, yet from these a certain amount of incidental and 
disconnected information can be gleaned, as for instance the fact 
that the poet Ch’en Ch’i!? was also a publisher. Two hereditary 


58 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Pavel 


publishing houses figure century after century in these title pages, 
the I" family at Hangchow and the Yu” family in Chien-an." 
This latter place was located in Fukien, very near the birthplace 
of the philosopher Chu Hsi. Here printers by the name of Yii 
were publishing books before the advent of the Sungs, and con- 
tinued down into Ming times, over four hundred years. The 
names of the family through generation after generation have 
been preserved in old Sung editions, which are, by the way, the 
finest editions of the Classics that are now in our libraries. Be- 
tween 1265 and 1275, just a few years after the conquest of 
southern China by Kublai, an edict was issued closing this print- 
ing establishment, and this edict has been preserved in the annals 
of the Mongol dynasty. The edict could not have remained long 
in force, however, for books with the mark of the Chien-an print- 
ing house continued to appear for still another century.“ 

The question naturally arises what kind of books were printed 
in these private establishments. Classics, commentaries, and 
histories seem to have been the favorite subjects, just as they were 
in the government printing office. The feeling of sacredness that 
in China has always surrounded and still surrounds the written 
or printed page—the feeling that impels men to-day as a pious 
act to gather and burn printed scraps of paper and thus save 
them from being defiled—prevented the printing of any books 
that were not considered to be of great worth and dignity. There 
is evidence, however, that the practice began early in the Sung 
Dynasty of printing the winning essays in the great national exam- 
inations.!° Local histories—histories of provinces and of cities— 
were also printed, probably in great number, judging from the 
number of those still extant.* Later in the dynasty the field of 
printed literature grew constantly wider, including works on 
botany and agriculture and collections of poetry. 

While Sung editions are rare and consequently valuable, there 
are a few in the possession of each of the great central libraries of 
Europe as well as in the Far East. A monumental work in 2100 
volumes was recently published in China consisting of photo- 





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ONE OF THE EARLIEST PRINTED BOOKS OF JAPAN 


a p an 


China and Japan 


an Tsang. Printed in J 


, both in 


A part of the Diamond Sutra, as translated from Sanskrit to Chinese by Hsti 


dhist scriptures 


d 


form usually used for Bud 


, the 


form 


/ 


in 1167 in folded book 


British Museum. 


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(‘wo Pr x Zz) 
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; eae PE gee SC PE ES a poe ea alana. Bt 


Cu. X] SUNG AND MONGOL DYNASTIES 59 


graphic reproductions of rare old books from Chinese private 
libraries. A study of the three hundred and more volumes in this 
collection that are photographed from originals of the Sung and 
Mongol dynasties gives a good cross-section view of the kinds of 
literature that were popular with Chinese publishers during the 
time that William the Conqueror was invading England and the 
barons were wresting Magna Charta from the unwilling King 
John, and while the Crusading princes were fighting with Saladin 
for the possession of the Holy Sepulchre. Histories are in the 
lead. Next come the collected works of various noted essayists, 
commentators, poets and philosophers—large collections, running 
to many volumes each. A number of contemporary works on 
agriculture also appear.!? 

As for the commercial side of this early publishing, a certain 
amount of light is thrown on the subject by an extract from an 
old account book, dated 1176: 


For book of 1300 pages, including 30 pages of extra heavy paper at the be- 
ginning and the same at the end: 
Paid to printer for paper, paste and labor. Per copy 1500 cash. 
Bent Gl platesie i Mee eMewa ns a0. ie, jel owes 1200 cash. 
Selling price of books” Percopy. ...°. 2 .°. 1. 8000 cash.¥ 


The Sung empire in spite of its high culture could not success- 
fully compete in warfare with the steadily encroaching nomads of 
the north. First the Khitans or Liao swept over Manchuria and 
the northern edge of the empire and held their domain for more 
than a century. Then the Kins, ancestors of the Manchus, over- 
threw the Liao and advanced still further, occupying for a whole 
century all that part of China which lies north of the Yangtze, 
and forcing the Chinese dynasty of the South, now known as 
Southern Sung, to move its capital to Hangchow. Finally in 1235 
the empire of the Kins, and half a century later the Sung domain 
itself, went down before the world-conquering Mongols. But 
“China is a sea that salts every river flowing into it.” Each 


60 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Pr. II 


nomad people during its century or more of rule became thor- 
oughly Chinese in culture and in ways of living—so much so 
that, first the Liao against the Kins, and later the Kins against 
the Mongols, stood as bulwarks of Chinese civilization attempt- 
ing to hold back the new inundations of barbarians from the 
desert. 

As for the printing of that part of North China that came under 
the Liao domain, very little is known. A statement in the Liao 
annals to the effect that in 1056 “‘a college was founded and all 
the Classics and their commentaries spread abroad,” makes it 
probable that there was a Liao edition of the Confucian Classics, 
but this is about the extent of our knowledge." 

The Kin dynastic records tell of the opening of a government 
office for the printing of the Classics in 1130, only five years after 
their conquest of North China. P’ing-yang,?° where this office was 
located, was a famous center of book production up to the end of 
the dynasty. Little more is known of official printing under the 
Kins, either in their own language *! or in Chinese, but a number 
of Chinese books that are still extant bear dates reckoned from 
the Kin era, showing that the ordinary life of the people, including 
printing, went on under the northern conquerors without much 
disturbance. 

The coming of the Mongols, who finished the conquest of 
North China in 1235 and of South China in 1280, wrought little 
change within China. The policy of the conquerors was to accept 
the customs of the land as they found them. The printing of China 
under the Mongols was thus similar to that of the preceding dy- 
nasty, but the broadening of the scope of printed literature, 
already noticeable, became even more marked. Among the new 
lines of printed literature recorded are a medical book,” a large 
quantity of almanacs * and even a play.* This last is of impor- 
tance because the novel and the drama first became prominent 
in Chinese literature in Mongol times. These may perhaps be a 
reflection of Persian influence, and show the cultural connection 
between the East and West that followed in the wake of political 


Ca. xX] SUNG AND MONGOL DYNASTIES 61 


union. The novel and the drama were both considered as very 
popular, almost vulgar, literature—if the word literature could be 
applied to them at all. The printing of a play marks a long step 
toward the popularization of printing. Another bit of popular 
printing that has been preserved is a woodcut entitled, “Beauties 
who from dynasty to dynasty have overturned empires.” % 

From many sources we learn that quantity production became 
far greater during Mongol times than in the earlier period and 
that it became still greater during the century after the Mongols 
were overthrown—the century before Gutenberg. It was appar- 
ently during the early years of the fifteenth century, just about the 
time of Gutenberg’s birth and of the large scale use of metal type 
in Korea, that Chinese block printing reached its highest point, 
so far as the annual number of books produced is concerned. 
But Chinese connoisseurs find in the printing of this time a cor- 
responding deterioration in quality and technique. 

There are many references to official printing in the annals of 
the Mongols and of the early Ming emperors. When Kublai cap- 
tured Hangchow, the southern capital, he carried away with him 
to Cambaluc (Peking) all the blocks that had been used by the 
official printing office, as well as a large number of blocks from the 
province of Kiangsi.27_ A government printing office having al- 
ready in 1236 *8 been opened in Cambaluc, the addition of all this 
material gave great impetus to its work. In 1293 this office was 
united with the Hanlin College and charged with printing certain 
books in the Mongol tongue as well as in Chinese.2® In 1330 a 
special office was opened for the translating and printing of Con- 
fucian literature in Mongol, and another office for printing the 
“sacred teachings of the imperial ancestors.” ®° 

Though many Chinese books of Mongol times are still extant, 
resembling in every way the books of the Sung era, very little in 
the Mongol tongue has been preserved. The Mongols were a to- 
tally unlettered people when they began their conquests. It was 
only after Jinghis’ career was well under way that he employed 
some Uigur scholars to reduce his language to writing. The 


62 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Pr. II 


Mongols, not being themselves a literary people, were content to 
patronize Chinese literature in the East and Arabic literature in 
the West. Inasmuch as the translation of books into Mongol was 
a matter of national pride rather than of utility, editions were 
small, and little of Mongol printing has survived. One survival 
that is of special interest is a Mongol poem, found by M. Pelliot 
at Tun-huang. This is apparently an original Mongol work and 
not translated from the Chinese. The four fragments of Mongol 
sutras found in Turkestan and the Buddhist prints and paper 
money found in Mongolia itself will be described in the chapters 
on Turfan and on the Mongol Empire.*! 


So far our description of the printing of the Sung era has taken 
account only of Confucian printing, the printing of the Classics 
and of those historical and literary works that followed in the 
wake of Féng Tao’s great publication. In this we have followed 
the Chinese records. The Chinese historians of the Sung Dynasty 
are curiously silent concerning the strictly religious printing of the 
Buddhists and the Taoists, and in this the early historians are 
followed by such modern compendiums as that of Liu An. The 
Buddhist tradition and the Confucian-secular tradition were 
apparently separate streams, whose waters seldom mingled. Yet 
it was Buddhist printing that spread to Japan; it was Buddhist 
printing that spread to Central Asia; and in China itself it was 
Buddhists who printed the greatest single work of which we have 
record. 

During the reign of the first Sung emperor (probably in the 
year 972) there was published in China one of the most monu- 
mental works that history records. This was the whole Buddhist 
canon, usually called the Tripitaka, which contained both the 
sacred scriptures that had been translated from the Sanskrit and 
a smaller number that had been written independently in Chi- 
nese. This collection consisted of 1 521 separate works, in more 


Cu.X] | SUNG AND MONGOL DYNASTIES 63 


than five thousand volumes, and covering 130,000 pages. It there- 
fore required the cutting of 130,000 blocks.*?. This massive work 
was reprinted (probably from the same blocks) twenty times dur- 
ing the Sung and Mongol dynasties. The fact that the printing of 
the Tripitaka is ignored by historians, who describe in such detail 
the work of Féng Tao, speaks eloquently of the regard—or lack of 
regard—in which Buddhism was held by the ruling and literary 
classes during the Confucian Revival. 

It was in Korea and Japan that the printing of the Tripitaka 
had its great effect. In 995 the king of Korea asked for and ob- 
tained a copy from the emperor of China. He then gave orders 
that it be revised and reprinted in his own dominions. The work 
occupied fourteen years. A copy of the Tripitaka now in Tokyo, 
of which only two of the 6,467 volumes are lacking, was printed 
in Korea in 1457 and brought to Japan a few years later, and 
claims to be a reprint made at that time by order of the king from 
the original tenth century wooden blocks that had been carefully 
preserved in the Hai-in monastery. 


Meanwhile in 987 a printed copy of the Tripitaka was brought 
from China to Japan by a priest named Chio-nen.** In describing 
this event there is used for the first time in Japanese literature the 
word suri-hon, printed book. For two hundred years—since the 
famous million charms of 770—Japanese records had been silent 
on the subject of printing. Either the art died out and had to be 
re-introduced from the mainland, or else it was too obscure to 
find a place in the annals. 

After the bringing of the Buddhist canon from China in 987, very 
nearly two centuries more elapsed before the first mention of any 
book being actually printed in Japan. In 1157 the Diamond Sutra 
was printed—the favorite book with printers of China, Japan and 
Central Asia—and a portion of this edition is now on exhibition 
in the British Museum. There are other sutras extant dating from 


64 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA Berea: 


1206 and 1223, and from that time on an ever increasing number.*5 
Apparently between 1278 and 1288 the great Tripitaka was 
printed in Japan, as it had been printed in China and Korea three 
centuries before. 

The books printed in Japan during the time corresponding to 
the Sung and Mongol periods—in striking contrast to those of 
China—are all Buddhist. They are as a rule works of merit, 
printed in payment of a vow to succor a parent, relative or friend 
in the next world—or else to obtain special merit for the one who 
bears the expense of the printing. They contain inscriptions of 
which the following is typical: ‘‘Moronafu on mature reflection 
sees that the faults of the present life are more than can be num- 
bered, and to expiate the sins of boundless ages of past time is an 
impossibility. He has therefore undertaken the printing of this 
true doctrine, in order thereby to eradicate his accumulated 
guilt.) 3 

With the inauguration of the Ashikaga régime in Japan 
(1336), and the expulsion of the Mongols from China (1368), 
there began the second great influx of Chinese culture into the 
island empire. For four hundred years, during all the cultural 
triumphs of the Sung period, China and Japan had scarcely met. 
Now all the stored-up energy of four centuries began to enter 
Japan like a flood, with the result that Japan was able to carry 
forward the great tradition of Sung culture during the long period 
of stagnation that set in on the continent during the Ming 
Dynasty. This epoch is marked by the first printing of Chinese 
Classics in Japan. The earliest Confucian work found by 
Satow in his researches, a copy of the Analects, is dated 1 364. 
Ten more such books bear dates between that and 1400. Up to 
this time Japan had printed nothing but Chinese translations 
from the Sanskrit. Now for two centuries she printed original 
Chinese works. It was not till the end of the sixteenth century, so 
far as known, that the first original Japanese work appeared in 
print—a copy of the Nihongi (Historical Records), printed with 
movable type. 


Cu. X] SUNG AND MONGOL DYNASTIES 65 


Buddhist printing spread not only east but west. The great 
quantity of Buddhist fragments of this period found by the Ger- 
man expeditions in the region of Turfan, the Uigur center, is 
described in a separate chapter.3? A smaller number of printed 
sutras of a similar character and in the same languages was found 
by M. Pelliot at Tun-huang, not in the sealed manuscript chamber 
that contained the Diamond Sutra, but in one of the other caves.*8 

A third source of Buddhist printing for this period is found in 
the discoveries of the Russian expedition of M. Koslov in Mon- 
golia.*® The excavation of the buried city of Kara-khoto brought 
to light a considerable number of printed books, evidently Bud- 
dhist, in the language of the Tanguts, a people of Tibetan origin, 
who occupied northwestern China and a part of Mongolia during 
the two centuries preceding the conquests of Jinghis Khan. These 
Tangut texts have not yet been deciphered. With them however 
were found a dozen or more printed books in Chinese which are of 
special interest because, unlike the books of Turfan, they almost 
all contain dates. 

The oldest of the Kara-khoto books is dated May 16, r1o16. 
Of printed books that bear a clear date, it is therefore the second 
in age which has so far been brought to light.49 Like the Diamond 
Sutra of Tun-huang, this is in roll form, the sheets being pasted 
together end to end. And this is an abridged edition of that same 
Diamond Sutra that was found at Tun-huang, though in a dif- 
ferent translation.‘| Each sheet shows in the margin the name of 
the individual by whom the block was engraved, while a final note 
gives the name of the patron who supplied the funds. As the pa- 
tron and at least two of the engravers have been identified as men 
whose names appear in local histories in the province of Shensi," 
this is evidently a book brought from that province, and a sample 
of the Buddhist printing that was going on in China proper near 
the old capital. 

In contrast to that part of China which was under the dominion 
of the Sung emperors, and where all Buddhist printing was of 
more or less humble origin, a number of the Kara-khoto sutras 


66 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA (Pre 


contain the statement that they were printed by order of the Tan- 
gut empress and at her expense. Among these is another Diamond 
Sutra, printed in 1189. 

Additional light on the Buddhist printing of the Tangut empire 
is shed by a note in the official records of the Yiian Dynasty. On 
November 29, 1294, it is stated, “‘orders were given to the Hsiian- 
cheng-yiian to stop cutting the blocks for the Tripitaka in Ho-si 
(Tangut).” “ There must have been everywhere in eastern Asia 
a passion for printing this great work with its five thousand odd 
volumes. It had already been printed in China, in Korea and in 
Japan. How much had been printed in Tangut before this order 
of 1294 put a stop to the work, we have no means of knowing. 

The special significance of the Kara-khoto printing, like that 
of the Uigurs of Turfan, lies in the fact that this was on the direct 
route to the West, and that these printed books, spanning the 
period from 1016 to 1352, were found not far from the original 
center of the empire of Jinghis Khan in one of the first regions that 
he added to his growing domain. 


Taoist books from the Sung Dynasty are rare, and the progress 
of Taoist printing is more or less obscure. It has already been 
shown (chapter two) that the part played by the Taoists in the 
origin of printing, though obviously of great importance, is more 
difficult to trace than the Buddhist and Confucian contributions. 
Taoist activity in T’ang times is also suggested in Liu Pin’s 
statement (chapter seven) and in the beginnings of playing cards.“ 

As for the Taoist philosophers, during the T’ang Dynasty the 
works of Laotzti and Chuang-tzii had been given a place in the 
Confucian canon on account of the Taoist affiliations of the 
dynasty. Though this position had been lost before Féng Tao 
published the Classics, yet in one of the commentaries that he 
published—a commentary written in T’ang times—the works of 
Lao-tzti and Chuang-tzti were included among the Classics.*® This 


Cu. X] SUNG AND MONGOL DYNASTIES 67 


is, so far as known, the first printing of Taoist classical literature— 
commentaries printed not by Taoists but as a part of the Con- 
fucian canon. 

The publication of the Confucian Classics in 953 and of the 
Buddhist Tripitaka in 972 evidently spurred the Taoists on to 
competition. The compiling of the full Taoist canon was com- 
pleted in 1016, and it was printed either at that time or somewhat 
later. Nothing from this first edition survives, but several re- 
prints, made before the end of the dynasty, are still extant. Two 
such Taoist books are among Koslov’s finds at Kara-khoto,* and 
one, a Sung edition of the Tao-té-ching, appears in the collection of 
photographic reproductions recently added to the Library of 
Congress. 

Curiously enough, two books of the Manichean scriptures, 
adopted and taken over by the Taoists as their own, were printed 
along with the other Taoist books, either at this time or in one of 
the later editions of the Taoist canon. That these sacred writings 
of a religion that made its way across northern Africa during the 
latter days of the Roman empire, and that has been known to us 
almost wholly from the works of St. Augustine, should have found 
their way in the course of centuries into China, there to appear in 
print some two or three hundred years before the art of printing 
reached Europe, is one of the anomalies of history. 

One reason why few Taoist books have survived is the deter- * 
mined attempt made by the Buddhists, often with imperial back- 
ing, to destroy them. In 1258 the Great Khan Mangu deputed his 
brother Kublai to represent him at a debate which was held in 
Kublai’s presence between Buddhist and Taoist representatives 
with regard to the authenticity of the tradition concerning Lao- 
tzu’s activities in Central Asia. The Taoists were defeated, and 
the result was an imperial order to the head of the Taoist religion 
that he should bring all Taoist books to the capital and burn 
them, and that all the blocks for printing such books should be 
burned at the same time.47 

Mohammedans have never in any part of the world been 


68 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Pr. II 


fond of printing. Though Moslems entered China in great 
numbers during the Mongol period and of course brought the 
Koran with them, there is no record that the Koran or any part of 
it was ever printed in China. There is, however, one record of 
printing for Mohammedans. In the year 1328 there was a great 
issue of printed almanacs, 3,123,185 of them, in three different 
sizes, with special details about lucky and unlucky days for marry- 
ing, starting on a journey, making a garment or buying goods. It 
is recorded that these almanacs were of two kinds, and that one 
kind was prepared specially for the use of Mohammedans.* 

Of all the religions that flourished in China under the Mongols, 
there is just one that, so far as our records go, never printed. This 
is Christianity. Neither the Nestorians, whose churches Marco 
Polo found at Chinkiang and Hangchow and in Central Asia, nor 
the Roman Catholics, whose work flourished in Peking and Fukien 
soon after Marco’s departure, seem to have availed themselves of 
the new invention—at least no Christian printing is recorded. 
However it must be remembered that even Buddhist printing is 
almost never recorded except in Buddhist books. It is only the 
finding of these books that has revealed the great part which 
Buddhist printing played. The discovery at some time in the 
future of a printed New Testament from this period is not an 
impossibility and may throw light on the problem of how printing 
was transmitted. 

This story of the development and spread of block printing in 
the Far East during the time of its greatest advance—during the 
four centuries before the art first made its appearance in Europe 
—may well close with a summary written by Yeh Méng-té about 
the year 1130.4° It is to be noted that the author wrote before 
quantity production really began, before most of the Sung books 
now in our libraries were printed, and before the speeding up that 
took place in Mongol and early Ming times. 

“Before the T’ang dynasty,” writes Yeh Méng-té, “all books 
were manuscripts, the art of printing not being in existence. Peo- 
ple regarded the collecting of books as something honorable, and 


Cu. X | SUNG AND MONGOL DYNASTIES 69 


no one had them in large quantity. Those who collected them had 
great ability in collating and comparing, whence it frequently 
happened that people had fine copies, and students, as a conse- 
quence of the great labor of transcription, also acquired great 
ability and closeness in reciting them. In the time of the Five 
Dynasties, Féng Tao first memorialized his sovereign praying 
that an official printing establishment might be put in operation. 
And again in those years of our reigning dynasty called Shun-hua 
(990-994) officers were commissioned to print the historical 
records and the annals of the first and second Han Dynasties. 
From that time forth printed books became still more numerous; 
scholars and officers ceased to make the collection of books a chief 
object of attention; and, as students found it easy to obtain books, 
the practice of reciting was in consequence broken up.” It is idle 
to speculate why in the stagnation of later centuries China lost the 
progressive educational impulse the existence of which this con- 
servative writer so laments. Suffice it to say that every record of 
the Sung Dynasty that we possess enables us to see a country 
which in its progressive thinking shows the result of this new 
stimulus and reminds the reader strangely of the re-awakened 
Europe of the century that followed Gutenberg. 


CHAPTER XI 
THE PRINTING OF PAPER MONEY 


HE form of early printing that was most widespread in 
China—the printing that touched all classes of the people, 


and also attracted the attention of Marco Polo and other 
European travellers—was paper money. 

Chinese writers in treating of paper money consider it to have 
been a natural development from other forms of representative 
currency. In B.c. 119, pieces of white deer skin a foot square 
were used at the court of the emperor Wu Ti with a certain mone- 
tary value.’ Again, a little more than a century later, the emperor 
Wang Mang issued a series of coins differing but slightly in size 
and shape, but differing greatly in value, and ordained by decree 
that they should circulate for values far in excess of the actual 
worth of the metal contained. 

As for money actually made of paper, most writers date its 
beginning in the reign of the emperor Hsien Tsung of the T’ang 
Dynasty. About the year 807 it is recorded that the supply of 
copper became scarce, apparently on account of the large number 
of images of Buddha being cast, and it was forbidden to use copper 
for the making of tools and other utensils. At the same time mer- 
chants who came to the capital were expected to deposit their 
cash with the government, and to receive in exchange certificates 
of indebtedness, which were apparently negotiable and hence re- 
ceived the name “flying money.” This relieved the temporary 
money stringency, but for some reason the practice was soon dis- 
continued. Two years later “flying money” was again resorted 
to and paid to merchants in exchange for iron and salt, but the 
practice was continued only a short time.’ 

While it is usually supposed that this “flying money”’ of 807 
and 809 was printed, there is nothing in the Chinese text to indi- 


Cu. XT] PAPER MONEY 71 


cate the fact. From the text it seems more probable that the 
“flying money” consisted simply of written receipts sealed with 
the imperial seal and identifiable by fitting the torn edge with 
the torn edge of a stub kept at the imperial treasury.‘ It is need- 
less to add that the claims of various collectors to possess paper 
money of this issue are without adequate foundation. 

A century and a half passed after the two issues of “flying 
money’ before anything resembling paper money is heard of again. 
The next notice is from the state of Shu or Szechuen, and comes 
from the very time when Féng Tao and the rulers of Shu were 
rivalling each other in printing the first edition of the Classics. 
At this time, according to Ma Tuan-lin, ‘‘The people of the state 
of Shu had made paper money without the knowledge of the 
government, because their iron money was so heavy. They had 
called this paper money chiao-rzii® or bills of exchange. Because 
these bills of exchange were convenient in trade, sixteen wealthy 
families had united together to manage their issue. But when the 
wealth of these families gradually diminished, and they were no 
longer able to redeem their pledges, many quarrels and lawsuits 
ensued. Certain persons advised the prohibition and cancellation 
of the bills. As this however would paralyze trade, it was sug- 
gested to establish an office for the issue of paper money on 
the part of the government and to prohibit the people from 
making it privately. According to this proposal, a decree 
was enacted to establish a bank for the issue of bills of exchange 
at I-chou.”’? 

This first issue of paper money in Shu cannot be accurately 
dated, but, as it is evident that the issue of notes by the state 
government took place some time before the year 970, it seems 
reasonable to suppose that that work was going on at just about 
the same time (935-954) that the first public printing of books 
was being carried on in Shu, and that the private issue by sixteen 
wealthy families began some years or decades earlier. It is inter- 
esting to note that I-chou in Shu is the very city about which the 
first references to printing in Chinese literature center, references 


Ae BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA Lait 


that carry the private printing of books as far back as the end of 
the ninth century. There can be little doubt that the paper 
money of I-chou, and subsequent issues, both in Shu and in the 
imperial capital, were printed.® 

While the first issue of printed paper money, like the first 
official printing of books, probably took place in Szechuen or 
Shu, the imperial government was not long in seeing the advan- 
tages of the new medium of exchange. In the year 970, under the 
first emperor of the Sung Dynasty, there was established at 
Ch’ang-an (Si-an-fu), the capital, a government office for the issue 
of “convenient money” as it was called. For four centuries this 
office did a flourishing business, until gradually paper largely dis- 
' placed other forms of money and became the chief currency of 
the empire. 

By 998 the amount of paper money in circulation had reached 
a total of 1,700,000 tiao. (A ¢iao is a string of a thousand cash, 
equivalent now to about thirty cents, U. S. currency, but having 
at that time far higher purchasing power.) In 1022 there was an 
additional issue of 1,130,000 tiao. During the next ten years the 
dangers of over-issue of paper money became apparent and some 
time about 1032 a decree was issued limiting the total circulation 
to 1,256,340 tiao. This law apparently had the desired effect, 
and for more than half a century was strictly adhered to.® In 
1068 counterfeit bills appeared, and a decree was promulgated 
providing that this offence should be punished by the same pen- 
alties as forgery of the seals of state. 

The decade from 1068 to 1078 witnessed an attempt at thor- 
ough-going renovation of China’s fiscal system under the adminis- 
tration of the radical reformer Wang An-shih, commonly known 
as China’s socialist premier. In spite of intense opposition from the 
conservatives, the whole incidence of taxation was changed and 
placed on a more democratic basis. Certain of the decrees of 
Wang An-shih indicate that it was no easy task to keep the paper 
currency at par and that various expedients had to be resorted to. 
But they were apparently successful, for it was nearly twenty 














NOTE FOR ONE THOUSAND CASH ISSUED BETWEEN 1368 AND 1399 


There is reason to believe that the paper money described by Marco Polo 
less then a century earlier than this did not differ greatly from the note here 
shown. Notice specially the red seal impressions. By the time this note was 
issued, seal impressions and printing, once identical had become as clearly 
distinguished as our postmark and postage stamp are to-day 
(34 X 22.5 cm.) 


New York Museum of Numismatics. 





I 


Cu. XT] PAPER MONEY 73 


years after Wang’s retirement and after his laws had been re- 
scinded, that serious depreciation began. 

Rapid inflation started some time between 1094 and 1107. At 
the latter date it is recorded that twenty times as much money 
was in circulation as in 1023, and in the same year a new issue was 
put forth with the regulation that each thousand cash of the new 
should be equal to four thousand cash of the old. A few years 
later the statement is made that a thousand cash note had only 
the purchasing power of ten cash. 

The history of the twelfth century is the story of a constant 
struggle between the Chinese and the Nii-chen Tartars, whose 
rulers after their conquest of North China called themselves the 
Kin Dynasty. It is also the story of a constantly losing warfare 
with high prices and falling currency. There were times when the 
printers of Hangchow must have been almost as busy as those of 
Berlin in 1923. Again there were times when inflation seemed to 
be checked for a while, only to break loose again with a mad issue 
of notes that quickly became worthless. 

In the year 1127 the emperor Hui Tsung was taken captive by 
the Tartars, and all northern China ceded to the Tartar power. 
From this time the Chinese Dynasty, that ruled only South China, 
was known as Southern Sung, and the period was one of general 
demoralization, in which continued and increasing currency in- 
flation played no small part. The constant wars between the 
Chinese and the Kins usually ended in Chinese defeat and large 
war indemnities, payable partly in gold and silver, partly in 
silk and other articles of merchandize. To meet this drain on 
her resources, China had recourse to inflation on a hitherto unpre- 
cedented scale. From 1161 to 1165, twenty-eight million taels’ 
worth of notes were issued, in denominations ranging from two 
hundred to a thousand cash. In 1166 between fifteen and sixteen 
million taels were added. (A tael was then considered equal to a 
thousand cash). From this time the amount increased steadily 
year by year. In 1209, the year after the most humiliating treaty 
with the Kins, when the annual tribute had been increased, and a 


74 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Prat 


special additional war indemnity of three million taels imposed, 
the pitiful experiment was tried of issuing a new kind of note, 
promising to pay in gold or silver, instead of copper as in previous 
issues. To show that this issue was something new, and to make 
it popular, it was printed on perfumed paper, made partly of silk. 
But it was all in vain. The new money was no better than 
the old. Ma Tuan-lin, China’s great historian, who himself wit- 
nessed the fall of the Sung Dynasty and the financial condition 
that hastened that fall, describes the final paroxysm of inflation 
in words that have a strangely familiar sound to modern ears: 
“After having for years tried to support and maintain these 
notes, the people had no longer any confidence in them, and were 
positively afraid of them. For the payment for government pur- 
chases was made in paper. The fund of the salt manufactories 
consisted of paper. The salaries of all the officials were paid in 
paper. The soldiers received their pay in paper. Of the provinces 
and districts, already in arrear, there was not one that did not 
discharge its debts in paper. Copper money, which was seldom 
seen, was considered a treasure. The capital collected together in 
former days was . . . a thing not even spoken of any more. So 
it was natural that the price of commodities rose, while the value 
of the paper money fell more and more. This caused the people, 
already disheartened, to lose all energy. The soldiers were con- 
tinually anxious lest they should not get enough to eat, and the 
inferior officials in all parts of the empire raised complaints that 
they had not even enough to procure the common necessities. All 
this was the result of the depreciation of the paper money.” '° 
Meanwhile, a century before the Southern Sung Dynasty had 
come to an end, the Tartar conquerors of northern China had 
followed the example of their southern neighbors and begun to 
issue paper money. The Kins who ruled in the North collected 
their tribute and indemnities from the Chinese in metal money or 
bullion, which the government stored up, issuing in its place a 
paper currency, which, in the beginning at least, fared better 
than the notes of the defeated Chinese. The first recorded issue by 


Cu. XI] PAPER MONEY 75 


this northern government was some time between 1156 and 1161, 
and from that time the use of paper money in the North became 
as general as in the South. 

The first recorded issue of paper money in the Mongol Empire 
took place in the year 1236, two years after Ogatai, Jinghis’ son, 
had overthrown the last Kin emperor and made himself master of 
North China. This was a small issue of fifteen thousand taels."! 
From 1260, when Kublai Khan completed the conquest of China 
and took the title of emperor, the issue of paper money became a 
settled and permanent feature of the Mongol government’s finan- 
cial policy. In the first year of his reign Kublai issued smaller 
notes ranging from ten cash to two thousand cash in value, and 
larger notes representing a thousand taels (ounces) of silk, which 
were considered to be the equivalent of fifty taels of silver. In 
1264 a treasury for the issuance of paper money was established 
in each province. Records have been preserved showing year by 
year the amount of notes issued through Kublai’s reign and that 
of his successors for sixty-four years (1260-1 324). During this 
period a total face value of over two billion taels (2,380,563,800) 
was printed, an average of more than thirty-seven million per year.” 

What this represented in real value it is hard to say. There was 
of course depreciation, but in a successful empire, receiving 
tribute instead of paying indemnities, depreciation was not rapid. 
Marco Polo distinctly states that in his time the notes passed for 
full face value and Pegalloti half a century later says the same. 
Other authorities disagree. According to one Chinese source 
there was a depreciation of sixty per cent. between 1287 and 1 309. 
According to others the depreciation was still greater. But it 
is everywhere indicated that the Mongol money held its own re- 
markably, as compared with that of the previous century, and 
that an annual issue of thirty-seven million taels, at a time when 
the total budget of the wealthiest sovereign in Europe could 
hardly have exceeded one million taels,!* makes Marco Polo’s 
Statement that “the Great Kaan hath more treasure than all 
the kings of the world” not a great exaggeration. 


76 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Pratl 


The subsequent fortunes of Chinese paper money may be 
briefly stated. In the last half century of the Mongol Dynasty, 
the period of decline, more paper money was issued than ever, and 
depreciation was rapid. Under the able administration of the first 
Ming emperor, Hung Wu (1368-1399), the amount of paper cur- 
rency issued was decreased, and it was put on a firm and stable 
basis; under Yung Lo (1403-1425) the issue of paper money 
ceased and was never resumed till the year 1851. 

In this resumé certain facts stand out that are of interest in the 
history of printing: 

First as to date. China had been issuing paper money for more 
than a century when Christendom saw its first paper. China 
had been on a paper money basis for four hundred years when 
block printing began in Europe. The last issue of Chinese paper 
money took place during Gutenberg’s childhood. 

Second as to amount. The average annual issue of paper money 
during the early years of the Mongol Dynasty—before heavy 
depreciation began—was over thirty-seven million taels. It is 
evident that in the various issues small denominations prevailed, 
sometimes as low as two cash. Hence there must have been more - 
than thirty-seven million separate notes printed each year. In 
other words, printing was being done on a very large scale, and 
specimens of printing were in the hands of everyone who bought 
or sold. 

Third as to geographical distribution. Marco Polo’s statement 
is, “He makes them [paper notes] to pass current universally over 
all his kingdoms and provinces and territories and whithersoever 
his power and sovereignty extends.” On the other hand, while 
Marco Polo has a regular formula with which he introduces his 
descriptions of Chinese cities, ““The people are idolators and sub- 
jects of the Great Kaan, and have paper money,” this formula is 
not used of places outside of China. De Rubruquis’ statement and 
certain Russian sources indicate that another form of representa- 
tive currency, made of sable fur, was used in Russia. An important 
issue of printed paper money took place in Persia in the year 1294, 


Cu. XT] PAPER MONEY os 


but the language used to describe it indicates that it was some- 
thing unusual.'* Marco Polo’s apparently conflicting statements 
may be reconciled, if we consider that paper money was the or- 
dinary medium of exchange only in China and in the territory 
immediately adjoining China, but that in other parts of the empire 
it was known and used by merchants having dealings with China. 
Outside the Mongol Empire there was an issue of paper cur- 
rency in Japan between 1319 and 1327.48 

Paper money was the first form of Chinese printing met with 
by European travellers, was independently described by at least 
eight pre-Renaissance European writers," and is, so far as known, 
the only form of Chinese printing described in European writings 
of pre-Gutenberg days. Marco Polo’s description is the most 
detailed, and also of interest because of the great publicity that 
his writings gained in Europe. 

“The Emperor’s Mint,” Marco Polo writes, ‘“‘is in this same 
City of Cambaluc, and the way it is wrought is such that you 
might say he hath the Secret of Alchemy in perfection, and you 
would be right! For he makes his money after this fashion. 

“He makes them take of the bark of a certain tree, in fact of 
the Mulberry Tree, the leaves of which are the food of the silk- 
worms—these trees being so numerous that whole districts are 
full of them. What they take is a certain fine white bast or skin 
which lies between the wood of the tree and the thick outer bark, 
and this they make into something resembling sheets of paper, but 
black. When these sheets have been prepared they are cut up into 
pieces of different sizes. The smallest of these sizes is worth a half 
tornesel; the next, a little larger, one tornesel; one, a little larger 
still, is worth half a silver groat of Venice; another a whole groat; 
others yet two groats, five groats, and ten groats. There is also a 
kind worth one Bezant of gold, and others of three Bezants, and 
so up to ten. All these pieces of paper are issued with as much 
solemnity and authority as if they were of pure gold or silver; and 
on every piece a variety of officials, whose duty it is, have to write 
their names, and to put their seals. And when all is prepared 


‘ 


78 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Pratl 


duly, the chief officer deputed by the Kaan smears the Seal en- 
trusted to him with vermilion, and impresses it on the paper so 
that the form of the Seal remains printed upon it in red; the 
Money is then authentic. Any one forging it would be punished 
with death. And the Kaan causes every year to be made such a 
vast quantity of this money, which costs him nothing, that 1t must 
equal in amount all the treasure in the world. 

“With these pieces of paper, made as I have described, he 
causes all payments on his own account to be made; and he makes 
them to pass current universally over all his kingdoms and 
provinces and territories, and whithersoever his power and 
sovereignty extends. And nobody, however important he may 
think himself, dares to refuse them on pain of death. And indeed 
everybody takes them readily, for wheresoever a person may go 
throughout the Great Kaan’s dominions he shall find these pieces 
of paper current, and shall be able to transact all sales and pur- 
chases of goods by means of them just as well as if they were coins 
of pure gold. And all the while they are so light that ten bezants’ 
worth does not weigh one golden bezant. 

“Furthermore all merchants arriving from India or other coun- 
tries, and bringing with them gold or silver or gems and pearls, 
are prohibited from selling to any one but the Emperor. He has 
twelve experts chosen for this business, men of shrewdness and 
experience in such affairs; these appraise the articles, and the 
Emperor then pays a liberal price for them in those pieces of 
paper. The merchants accept his price readily, for in the first place 
they would not get so good an one from anybody else, and 
secondly they are paid without any delay. And with this paper- 
money they can buy what they like anywhere over the Empire 
whilst it is also vastly lighter to carry about on their journeys. 
And it is a truth that the merchants will several times in the year 
bring wares to the amount of 400,000 bezants, and the Grand 
Sire pays for all in that paper. So he buys such a quantity of 
those precious things every year that his treasure is endless, 
whilst all the time the money he pays away costs him nothing at 


Cu. XI] PAPER MONEY 79 


all. Moreover, several times in the year proclamation is made 
through the city that any one who may have gold or silver or 
gems or pearls, by taking them to the Mint shall get a handsome 
price for them. And the owners are glad to do this, because they 
would find no other purchaser give so large a price. Thus the 
quantity they bring in is marvellous, though those who do not 
choose to do so may let it alone. Still, in this way, nearly all the 
valuables in the country come into the Kaan’s possession. 

“When any of those pieces of paper are spoilt—not that they 
are so very flimsy neither—the owner carries them to the Mint, 
and by paying three per cent. on the value he gets new pieces in 
exchange. And if any Baron, or any one else soever, hath need of 
gold or silver or gems or pearls, in order to make plate, or girdles, 
or the like, he goes to the Mint and buys as much as he list, paying 
in this paper money. 

“Now you have heard the ways and means whereby the Great 
Kaan may have, and in fact Aas, more treasure than all the Kings 
in the World; and you know all about it and the reason why.” !? 

The question naturally arises what this paper money looked 
like that was issued in such quantities for four hundred years be- 
fore the invention of printing in Europe, and that was regarded 
with such interest by so many of the early European travellers in 
China. Among the many Chinese notes held by museums and 
private collectors that claim early date, it is necessary to select 
those whose genuineness is unassailed.18 

The Russian expedition under M. Koslov discovered at Kara- 
khoto in Mongolia several of the notes that were there in use dur- 
ing the period of Mongol domination. The inscription on them is 
in the square Mongol character. They represent not the currency 
of China that was described by Marco Polo, but the currency 
that was in use in Mongolia itself. The notes are badly damaged, 
but are still in part legible.1® 

A considerable number of notes of a later issue, found at Pe- 
king, are even more valuable in reconstructing the paper money 
which Marco Polo described. During the looting of the Palace 


80 BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA [Proil 


precincts at Peking after the Boxer uprising in 1900, an image of 
Buddha had been thrown down by some European soldiers, and 
in the pedestal were found gems, jewelry, ingots of gold and silver, 
and finally a bundle of notes. The notes, being of no intrinsic 
value, were handed to a bystander, a surgeon in the United States 
army, and notes from that bundle have now found their way to 
museums in Shanghai, New York, London, Berlin and elsewhere. 
These notes were found to have been issued during the reign of 
Hung Wu (1368-1399), and, as the only recorded issue of paper 
money during that reign was in the year 1375, that date has been 
tentatively assigned to them. That they are genuine notes of Hung 
Wu’s reign has not been questioned. 

These notes are a foot long by eight inches wide. They are 
printed on heavy paper of a dark slate color. The value, one 
thousand cash, is shown not only by the text, but also by a pic-_ 
ture of a string of cash, divided in piles of a hundred each. What is 
of greatest interest is the clear distinction between print and seal. 
The text and ornamentation is in black and is a good example of 
careful printing, not engraved, but excellently printed from a well 
cut plate of either wood or metal. The seals on the contrary, 
which are to these notes what the signature is to ours, are roughly 
stamped in red. The seals and the print are as clearly distin- 
guished and bear much the same relation in appearance as the 
postage stamp and the post-mark on a modern letter. 

While the probable date of these notes is about seventy years 
after Marco Polo’s description, and seven years after the fall of 
the Mongol Dynasty, there is every reason to believe, from the 
descriptions of Chinese, Arabic and European writers, that the 
earlier notes were very similar to these that have come down to us. 

If a full series of notes were available, it would throw much 
light on the early history of printing. From the “laundry ticket” 
receipts for goods or cash deposited, that were called “flying 
money” in the ninth century, to these beautifully printed and 
sealed notes of the fourteenth is a long development. Indications 
are that this development took place in the main early, and that 


Cu. XI] PAPER MONEY 81 


the form of the notes during the last two or three centuries was 
fairly constant. During this early period, while the seal was de- 
veloping into the true block print in Buddhist monasteries, it 
would be interesting to know whether in commercial circles a 
similar and independent development was going on that culmi- 
nated in the private bank notes of Szechuen in the tenth century. 

But that is speculation. The clear facts that concern this his- 
tory are that during the four centuries before Gutenberg a form of 
printing was going on that issued not only millions, but actually 
billions, of notes, and scattered them to every hamlet in China, 
that this printing of paper money extended at one time as far west 
as Persia (Tabriz), and that it was so interesting to European 
travellers that no less than eight of them described it. 


a < 
Keis oo 


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PART III 


THE COURSE OF BLOCK PRINTING 
WESTWARD 





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CHAPTER XII 


EARLY COMMERCE IN THOUGHT AND IN WARES 
ALONG THE GREAT SILK WAYS 


r XO understand the westward movement of printing it is 


necessary to form some picture of the ways by which early 

culture passed between the West and the Far East. The 
idea that the history of China has until recent times been a closed 
compartment, affected by nothing and affecting nothing in the 
Western world, is being rapidly dispelled by investigation. Each 
new journey of exploration into Central Asia and each new study 
of ancient literature makes it possible to follow a little further the 
silken thread that has bound the civilization of the West to that of 
the distant East. Imperial Rome wanted silk, China had it. 
Here is the key to the development of a great caravan route that 
crossed Turkestan, Persia and Syria, and reached the Mediterra- 
nean at the ports of Phenicia and Palestine. 

Modern scholarship has not yet answered the question why the 
Birth of Thought—the age of Confucius, of Buddha, of the He- 
brew prophets and of the early Greek philosophers—came to 
the widely separated lands of ancient culture at the same time. 
Much less has it explained that earlier Neolithic pre-civilization 
that developed similar stone implements and even similar pottery 
designs at various places along the route from Greece to China.! 

With the establishment of Roman dominion in the West and the 
Han Dynasty in China, the connection between East and West 
first begins to emerge into the light of history. Somewhere about 
B.C. 170 a tribe known to Chinese annals as the Yiieh Chih, and 
later to the Greeks as Indo-Scythians, a people probably of Indo- 
European origin, living within the borders of China in what is now 
the province of Kansu, left their ancestral home and moved west- 
ward. Within a little more than two centuries they had conquered 


86 THE SPREAD WESTWARD (Pr. IH 


the eastern provinces of what had been Alexander’s empire, and 
had shown their ability to absorb diverse elements of culture by 
striking coins in Greek style, bearing the effigies of the gods of 
Greece, of Persia, of Egypt, and of India and even portraits of 
Augustus Caesar and of Buddha. All the gods, including Buddha 
(who looks strangely like Apollo) are clearly labelled in Greek. 
It was in this Indo-Scythian empire that Buddhism was trans- 
formed to suit its more cosmopolitan environment, and that the 
new Buddhism started on its long journey eastward to China and 
Japan. At the court of one of the Indo-Scythian kings, some time 
before their Buddhist and coin-striking days (cir. B.c. 126), Chang 
Ch’ien, an emissary of the Chinese emperor, gained for China its 
first clear reports of the lands of the West. Chang Ch’ien also 
brought back the seeds of alfalfa and the grape vine, which were 
planted in China by the Emperor, and are, so far as known, the 
first plants introduced into China from the West.2_In the wake of 
Chang Ch’ien’s mission came the Chinese conquest of Eastern 
Turkestan, opening up the pathway across the Indo-Scythian 
kingdom to the Roman Orient, and with this conquest came an 
enlarged silk trade. Armies, ambassadors and caravans were sent 
frequently to the West, one Chinese embassy in the year A.D. 97 
got as far as the Persian Gulf and was deterred from going on to 
Rome only by the reports which they heard of a “kind of home- 
sickness which men have when they are long upon the sea.” The 
frst travellers recorded from Rome to China came by sea as far as 
Tongking in the year A.D. 166, and were led from there overland 
to the Chinese capital, Lo-yang. They are known in the Chinese 
annals as envoys from the Emperor An Tun, who has been iden- 
tified as Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.’ 

During this period silk was the chief article of export from 
China, the Chinese keeping the process of silk production a strict 
secret. Roman writers thought of silk as a vegetable product, 
which was stated by Virgil to be combed from trees. Silk came 
into the Roman Empire in ever increasing quantities during the 
classic period, and continued to come into Constantinople after 


Cu. XII] THE GREAT SILK WAYS 87 


Rome had fallen. The re-opening of the silk routes was one of the 
central features of the foreign policy of Justinian (A.D. 527-565) 
and his immediate successors. These routes had been closed by 
the Sassanian power in Persia out of fear of the fast growing 
Turkish kingdom on the northeast, which was at this time first 
heard of in western history. Justinian tried to interest the king 
of Abyssinia and certain Christian princes in India in a project to 
open a new trade route with the East that should avoid the Per- 
sian dominion altogether. When this plan fell through owing to 
the lethargy of the king of Abyssinia, advantage was taken of an 
embassy from the Khan of the Turks, and a return embassy was 
sent in 568 around north of the Caspian Sea to the Turkish court 
(in Turkestan) and an alliance formed, the purpose of which was 
to compel Persia to allow a resumption of the silk trade. 

Meanwhile some Nestorian priests returning from the East had 
brought to Justinian the astonishing news that silk was not 
“combed from trees,’ but was produced by caterpillars, whose 
eggs they believed they could obtain. With the emperor’s encour- 
agement they proceeded either to China, or—more likely—to the 
kingdom of Khotan in Chinese Turkestan, whither silk culture 
had been brought in the year 41g by a Chinese princess. To avoid 
detection as they carried the precious eggs over the frontier, they 
hid them in the long bamboo staff that one of the priests carried. 
From the eggs carried in this bamboo staff—if the story told by 
the Greek chroniclers is to be credited—are descended all the 
silkworms that have been reared in Europe down to modern 
times.° 

The century after Justinian saw marked changes in the face of 
Asia. Two great empires, that of the T’ang Dynasty in China and 
that of the Caliphs in the West, had divided most of Asia between 
them, and the two empires had met in Turkestan. From this time 
on it was the Arabs who supplied Europe with silk. Imported silk 
they drew from China through Samarkand. Silk culture they 
learned from Constantinople. Throughout the Middle Ages 
Europe bought the bulk of its silk—both Chinese silk and silk of 


88 THE SPREAD WESTWARD (erat 


Arabic manufacture—from the Arabs. Not till the Crusades were 
well under way did the art of silk culture become known in West- 
ern Europe, being first introduced into Italy in the thirteenth 
century and into France in the fourteenth. 

Silk was thus, so far as known, the first of China’s great gifts to 
the West, reaching Europe some time before the Christian Era; 
but the art of. producing silk, like most Eastern arts, reached 
Western Europe only through the Crusades. 

To-day there is no part of the world, except the Polar Regions, 
less known and less often traversed by civilized man than the 
lands that lie between China and the Near East. Some Germans, 
escaping from internment in China during the World War, were 
reported in the newspapers to have made the journey, and it was 
thought at the time to be an incredible feat. This is the one great 
trade route of the world where the means of communication are 
poorer to-day than they were one or two thousand years ago. 
Other ways of commerce by sea and land have opened up and 
have left the ancient route from China to the Western world 
scarcely even a memory. It is hard to-day to imagine that great 
highway over which the world’s long distance caravans plied to 
and fro. Two or three years were spent on the journey—often 
more, for it is seldom that one man or one caravan made the 
whole trip. Men of all races and creeds relayed the silks of China 
and the varied wares of the West stage by stage over the long road. 
Great cities grew up, both in the fruitful lands and in the oases of 
the desert along this now deserted trail. Turfan and Capernaum, 
cities at the two extremes, that once profited by being near the 
great trade route, to-day are ruins. Samarkand and Bagdad have 
lost their glory. But there was a day when that whole road lay 
through the lands of prosperous peoples who gathered together 
the elements of culture from all the East and all the West, an 
eclectic and cosmopolitan culture that has been buried and pre- 
served wherever the route lay across what is now desert, espe- 
cially in Chinese Turkestan. 

Nor was it through a short period that this prosperity of the 


Cu. XII] THE GREAT SILK WAYS 89 


cities along the Silk Ways continued. Whether Western Asia 
was ruled by Caesar or Caliph, Western Asia loved to clothe it- 
self in silk, and Western Asia had products that it was willing 
to send in exchange. Great empires—the Romans, the Indo- 
Scythians, the Caliphs and the T’angs of China—facilitated the 
trade, which continued to grow till finally in the Crusades Europe 
broke through and began to have her part also in the traffic along 
the Great Silk Ways. 

Owing to the fact that until the later Arab period goods were 
generally carried by relays and few caravans went the whole dis- 
tance, people at the one end of the line knew very little about peo- 
ple at the other end. But that did not prevent ideas and products 
from making the long journey, even though the recipients seldom 
knew from whence they came. Pliny called the apricot and the 
peach “Armenian tree” and “Persian tree,” little knowing that 
the Armenians and Persians had received them from China.°® 
Aristophanes called chickens “Persian birds” without realizing 
that chickens came from Burmah.? When Saladin made a present 
of porcelain to the Sultan of Damascus, he called it Chinese, but 
when some centuries later porcelain began to be manufactured in 
Venice, it was called Arabic. 

So during the long period from Roman times down through the 
Middle Ages there was a steady give and take. The peach and 
the apricot, silk and tea,® porcelain and paper, playing cards,° 
and probably gunpowder and the compass were among China’s 
gifts to the West. The grape and alfalfa, the carrot,"° glass manu- 
facture, Nestorian Christianity and Mohammedanism, the al- 
phabet,! and some impulses of Greek art were a few of the things 
that the countries of the Far East received in return. Laufer 
traces the history of some twenty-four agricultural products, the 
knowledge of which was carried westward from China to Persia or 
beyond from the Christian Era down to Mongol times, and sixty- 
eight that were carried in the opposite direction." 

The greatest gifts of Southern and Western Asia to the Far East 
were their religions, and these formed the closest cultural link be- 


go THE SPREAD WESTWARD [Preity 


tween East and West. The advance of Buddhism from India 
through Central Asia to China and Japan is well known. Less 
known but of great importance as forming a point of connection 
across the continent is the advance of Nestorian Christianity and 
Manicheism. 

The latter, the religion of Mani, which was founded in Persia 
during the third century on a substructure of Zoroastrianism 
and’ Gnostic Christianity, and which greatly influenced the 
thought of the Roman Empire (St. Augustine himself being a 
Manichean before he became a Christian), has been little known 
until recent discoveries in Chinese Turkestan have brought to 
light a large quantity of Manichean scriptures and other writings 
in Persian, Sogdian, Chinese and certain dialects of Turkish. It is 
now known to have been the state religion of the Uigurs, whose 
capital was at Turfan. Certain of the Manichean scriptures were 
printed in China in the twelfth century (see chapter ten). 

Christian missionaries of the Nestorian sect came from Persia 
and Syria into Chinese Turkestan sometime in the fifth or sixth 
century. In almost every site excavated by the German expedi- 
tions in Turkestan, remains of Christian churches were found, with 
manuscripts in Syriac and Persian as well as in Chinese and the 
languages of Central Asia. Even the correspondence of some of 
these priests with their mother churches in Syria has been un- 
earthed. Recent discoveries tend fully to confirm the record con- 
tained in the famous Si-an-fu inscription of the introduction of 
Christianity into China in the seventh century and of its per- 
sistence, both in Central Asia and in China down to Mongol 
times. The metropolitans of Central Asia and of China were sub- 
ject to the Nestorian patriarch of Bagdad, a dignitary who, 
strange to say, was given by the Moslem Caliphs great freedom 
in the exercise of his authority. During the latter part of the 
period, by special dispensation the metropolitan of China was re- 
lieved of reporting to his superiors in Bagdad except once in four 
years. At one time (during the Mongol period) a Christian of 
Turkish extraction from northern China was made patriarch of 


Cu. XII] THE GREAT SILK WAYS gl 


Bagdad.” The exaggerated reports that reached the Crusaders 
of the exploits of Prester John have now been traced as referring 
to the Nestorian king of one of the tribes of Central Asia. 

The Mohammedan penetration of the Far East began within a 
few years after the death of the prophet, when about the year 652 
the first Mohammedan envoys reached the Chinese court. From 
that time Arab trade with China steadily increased. How the 
early Arabic trading posts flourished is indicated by Abti Zeyd, 
who, writing about goo, stated that, in the rebellion of 878 in the 
city of Canton,'® one hundred and twenty thousand Moslems, 
Jews, Christians and Parsees, who were there on business of 
traffic, were killed. Even allowing for Arab exaggeration, there is 
evidence here that trade between China and the Saracen Empire 
had already reached large proportions. 

The infiltration of religious ideas from the West is again illus- 
trated in the account of the Arab traveller Ibn Vahab, who visited 
China in the latter part of the ninth century and describes his 
audience with the emperor. The emperor, after discoursing with 
considerable accuracy of the five great kingdoms of the world— 
the Chinese, Turkish, Indian, Arab, and Greek—is said by the 
Arab narrator to have pulled from a box beside his throne pictures 
of Noah in the Ark, of Moses and his rod, of Jesus upon an ass, 
and of the Twelve Apostles. The surprising modernness of this 
Chinese emperor as seen by his Moslem visitor is illustrated by 
the fact that though he marvelled at what Jesus accomplished in 
the short space of thirty months, he combatted the idea that there 
had ever been a universal deluge and laughed heartily when his 
Arab visitor tried to tell him that the world had been created only 
six thousand years. 

The Mohammedans in China always retained a close connection 
with their home base either by sea or across Central Asia. They 
were under a system somewhat similar to present-day extra-terri- 
toriality, and it was not until after Mongol times that they began 
to be submerged as an integral part of the Chinese people. The 
large number of Moslems in China to-day, who as a rule are of 


g2 THE SPREAD WESTWARD [Pr. III 


Arabic ancestry, shows the extent of this early infiltration and 
- adicates how close must have been the contact between China and 
the West that was thus established. 

In return for religious ideas, which were moving eastward and 
northward across Asia, China sent back her inventions. Some of 
the inventions with which the Chinese have been credited still 
await the research student and nothing clear and definite can be 
stated until a large amount of careful study has been made. The 
invention of paper, which has been more fully studied than the 
others, is described in chapters one and twelve. Though gun- 
powder and the compass are still obscure in their beginnings, a few 
words about them as well as about porcelain may present some 
useful analogies to the student of printing. | 

It is known that gunpowder was used in the T’ang dynasty, 
though probably not for warfare. The first use of gunpowder in 
warfare was in the form of explosive hand grenades, or grenades 
thrown by various mechanical devices. When the use of these 
grenades first began is still obscure. They were apparently used 
mn the battles of 1161 and 1162, and again by the northern Chi- 
nese against the Mongols in 1232. The Arabs became acquainted 
with saltpeter some time before the end of the thirteenth century 
and called it Chinese snow, as they called the rocket the Chinese 
arrow. Roger Bacon (c. 1214 to ¢. 1294) is the first European 
writer to mention gunpowder, though whether he learned of it 
through his study of Arab lore or through his acquaintance with 
De Rubruquis, the Central Asiatic traveller, is uncertain. All that 
can be said certainly is that the use of gunpowder in warfare be- 
came known among the Saracens and in Europe very quickly 
after its first use in warfare in China." 

With respect to the compass, the Chinese had known the prop- 
erties of load-stone since before the Christian era, and during the 
frst millenium after the Christian era there are many curious 
stories, the interpretation of which is still obscure, with regard to 
the construction of “‘south-pointing chariots.” The earliest clear 
mention in Chinese literature (or any literature) of a magnetic 


Cu. XIT] THE GREAT SILK WAYS 93 


needle is by Shén Kua (1030-1093), the same man who first de- 
scribed movable type printing. The first mention in Chinese 
literature of the use of the compass for navigation is a little after 
1100 but refers to the period from 1086 to 1099. At this time, 
according to the statement of Chu Yi, it was used by foreign (that 
is probably Arab or Persian) navigators between Canton and 
Sumatra. The first mention of the compass in Europe is in a poem 
by Guyot de Provins about r1go and again a few years later by 
Cardinal de Vitry, who visited Palestine in the fourth Crusade, 
and who describes load-stone as having been brought from 
“India.” The indications would seem to be that the Chinese first 
knew the use of the compass but had not applied it to navigation;18 
that Arab traders in Chinese waters were the first to use this 
Chinese device for sailing ships; and that from them the secret 
was carried to Europe during the Crusades." 

The gradual evolution and westward movement of porcelain is 
better known. As far back as the Han Dynasty (i.e. before a.p. 
220) the Chinese had discovered that at a sufficiently high tem- 
perature a very fine glaze could be obtained with powdered fels- 
pathic rock mingled with lime. It is not, however, until about the 
seventh or eighth century that this glazed pottery was so per- 
fected that it can be called porcelain. The first appearance of 
porcelain in the Near East was in 1171 (or 1188) when Saladin 
sent a present of forty pieces of Chinese porcelain to the Sultan of 
Damascus. Porcelain manufacture was not known in Europe till 
after the Crusades. It is first mentioned in 1470 in Venice and the 
statement is made that the Venetians learned the art from the 
Arabs. 

It is in this world of varying and increasing currents of trade 
and intercourse that block printing started on its westward way. 
The trade that began under the wide empires of the Caesars and 
the Hans and was furthered by the Caliphs and the T’angs, 
reached its culmination in the time of the Mongol Empire and 
the Crusades. Immediately after the Crusades new ideas of all 
sorts, some of which had their origin in the East, began to sweep 


94 THE SPREAD WESTWARD (Pr. LI 


over Europe. Whether or not the discovery of printing, that 
foundation stone on which modern education is built, is one 
of the gifts which Europe received from the East through the 
medium of the Mongol Empire and the Crusades, will be the sub- 
ject of investigation in the next chapters—the discussion in Part 
Three being confined to Block Printing and in Part Four to the 
use of Movable Type. 


CHAPTER XIII 


PAPER’S THOUSAND-YEAR JOURNEY FROM CHINA 
TO EUROPE 


APER has everywhere been the forerunner of printing. 
Pivvinee this strong economical material, printing could 

never have made headway. Moreover the westward move- 
ment of paper not only prepared the way for printing, but its 
history is often suggestive of the ways in which printing may have 
travelled. In order to investigate the course of block printing, it 1s 
therefore necessary to understand clearly the history of paper. 
This history of paper is open before us. As compared with that of 
block printing, the advance of paper was a triumphal progress, 
hailed by literary men, and displacing quickly the old writing ma- 
terials in every place it touched. Typography later met with a 
like welcome, first in Korea, then in Europe. But block printing 
was always in its beginnings an obscure and despised art, whose 
history can be traced only with the greatest difficulty. A study 
therefore of the progress of paper affords the best introduction 
to the more difficult study of the westward course of the block 
printing which followed in its wake. 

The invention of paper from hemp, tree bark, fish nets and rags, 
as officially announced to the Emperor of China in the year a.p. 
105, has been described in the first chapter. The history of the 
later Han Dynasty, written about 470, states, “From this time on 
it was used universally.” Other references confirm the impression 
that its spread through China was very rapid. West China is 
especially noted by several writers as one of the early seats of the 
paper industry.! 

The first point at which paper is met on the journey from China 
westwards is one of the watch towers of a western spur of the 


96 THE SPREAD WESTWARD ewes DLE 


Great Wall. In this ruined watch tower near Tun-huang, amid a 
mass of documents written on wood and one or two on silk, Dr. 
Stein discovered nine letters which are without doubt the earliest 
bits of paper that have yet been found. They are neatly folded 
sheets about sixteen inches by nine, each contained in an addressed 
wrapper. Microscopic examination shows that the material is a 
pure rag paper. The language is not Chinese like that of the sur- 
rounding wooden slips, but Sogdian, an Iranian language written 
in a script derived from Aramaic. None of the letters are dated, 
but as the Chinese documents in these watch towers cover 
the years A.D. 21-137 (one possibly 152) it seems certain that 
the garrisoning of the watch towers ended at about the mid- 
dle of the century, and that the paper there found must have come 
from the first half century after T's’ai Lun’s official announcement 
of his invention. In another watch tower were found several frag- 
ments in Chinese, which are presumably of about the same date. 
Gradually paper made its way westward in Turkestan. The 
earliest paper found by Sven Hedin’s expedition—up to that time 
the earliest paper known—was found at Loulan, and is believed to 
date from about a.D. 200.2. Each of the older sites excavated in 
Turkestan yields both wood and paper as writing material. At 
several places the gradual displacement of wood by paper in the 
third, fourth and fifth centuries can be traced. At Loulan for ex- 
ample, abandoned about A.D. 350, some twenty per cent. of the 
many documents found by Dr. Stein are on paper, the balance 
on wood. 

At Turfan the oldest paper found by the Prussian Expeditions 
dates from 399. Here paper coming from the east met the culture 
currents that were coming from the west and south. From here we 
have early Aramaic texts on paper, and even some three or four 
words of Greek. Also written on paper is a fragment of a Bible 
manuscript (from the Book of Psalms) in Persian, which has by 
some been dated as early as 450. The early paper from Turfan 
includes Manichean texts, Buddhist canons, and a variety of 


Cu. XIII] WESTWARD MOVEMENT OF PAPER 97 


Christian literature—among other things a delightful fairy story 
based on the visit of the Wise Men to Bethlehem. 

Step by step paper penetrated around both edges of the Takla- 
makan Desert, till by the end of the fifth century, through all the 
Central Asian territory which then as now was under Chinese 
control, except in certain backward spots, the use of wood for 
writing had stopped and paper was in general use.° 

In the early years of the eighth century the Arabs mastered 
what is now known as Russian Turkestan. Here in July, 751, 
paper manufacture entered the Arabic world and started on its 
career from Samarkand to Spain. The circumstances are related 
in detail in the Arabic annals. There was war between two Turkish 
chiefs. One appealed for help to China, the other to the Arabs. 
The Arabs defeated the Chinese army and drove them back as 
far as the Chinese frontier. Among the prisoners taken were some 
paper makers, who taught the art of paper making at Samarkand.‘ 
The Chinese annals of the T’ang Dynasty describe the same battle 
and the date exactly agrees.® 

The Arabic report states that the paper introduced into Sa- 
markand was made of “‘grasses and plants.” On the other hand, 
all early Arabic paper that has come down to us, including the 
great Rainer collection, is rag paper. An examination of a number 
of papers of just this period from Eastern Turkestan (768-787) 
shows that they are made of a mixture of rags and raw fibers, the 
raw fibers predominating.’ The Arabs seem to have found diff- 
culty in getting all the materials that had been used by the 
Chinese and made their paper wholly of rags, like the earlier 
Chinese paper found by Stein in the Great Wall. 

“Paper of Samarkand” soon became well-known through the 
Asiatic dominions of the Caliphate—so much so that a century 
later (869) Juhith wrote, “The papyrus of Egypt is for the West 
what the paper of Samarkand is for the East.”’ A writer of the 
eleventh century, Tha’alibi, writes, “Among the specialties of 
Samarkand that should be mentioned is paper. It has replaced 
the rolls of Egyptian papyrus and the parchment which were for- 


98 THE SPREAD WESTWARD hee nit 


merly used for writing, because it 1s more beautiful, more agree- 
able and more convenient. It is found only here and in China. 
The author of the work ‘Journeys and Kingdoms’ tells us that 
paper was brought from China to Samarkand by prisoners. It was 
Ziyad, son of Salih, who took those prisoners, among whom were 
found the paper makers. Then the manufacture grew and not 
only filled the local demand but also became for the people of 
Samarkand an important article of commerce. Thus it came to 
minister to the needs and well-being of mankind in all the coun- 
tries of the earth.” 

But long before this a rival factory had started at Bagdad. In 
the year 793-794 Harun-al-Rashid of Arabian Nights fame 
brought Chinese workmen for the starting of the first paper fac- 
tory in the capital. Bagdad however does not seem to have seri- 
ously rivalled Samarkand as a source of supply. 

Already in the tenth century we find Arabic scholars debating 
with warmth whether the Omayyids or the Abbassids had the 
honor of the introduction of paper at Samarkand, the change of 
dynasty having occurred in 750. 

The third factory recorded in the Arabic empire was on the 
south-east coast of Arabia. The fourth was Damascus. It was 
Damascus that for several centuries was the main source of sup- 
ply for Europe, paper in Europe being generally known as charta 
damascena. Mambij or Bambyx, another Syrian town, seems also 
to have given its name to paper in Europe, with strange conse- 
quences. For charta bambycina, paper of Bambyx, was corrupted 
to charta bombycina, paper of cotton, and from the time of Marco 
Polo down to 1885, when the view was disproved by the micro- 
scopical investigations of Dr. Wiesner, Arabic paper and early 
European paper have always been known as “‘cotton paper” and 
the invention of rag paper was attributed to the Germans and 
Italians of the fifteenth or sixteenth century.’ 

But while Damascus became the center of the export of paper 
to Europe, the secret of its manufacture was destined to enter 
Christendom by a longer route. It had come the full length of 


Cu. XIII] WESTWARD MOVEMENT OF PAPER 99 


Asia; it was yet to go the full length of North Africa and enter 
Europe through Saracen Spain. 

Paper in Egypt has special interest because it is here in the 
desert that almost all the old Arabic paper has been found—just as 
the desert of Turkestan has been the storehouse for old Chinese 
paper. The Erzherzog Rainer collection at Vienna contains more 
than twenty thousand documents on paper dating from about 
8008 to 1388. It is the examination of this Egyptian paper 
which has thrown the greatest light on the history of paper 
manufacture. 

The steady displacement of papyrus by paper is interestingly 
illustrated by the dated documents in this collection. Of the 
second century of the Hegira (719-815) there are thirty-six dated 
documents all on papyrus. From the following century (816-912) 
there are ninety-six documents on papyrus and twenty-four on 
paper. From the fourth century (913-1009) only nine are on 
papyrus and seventy-seven on paper. The last papyrus dates 
from 936. 

A polite letter of thanks, whose date lies between 883 and 895, 
closes with the words, “Pardon the papyrus.”’ As the letter is 
written on a most beautiful piece of papyrus, the writer is evi- 
dently apologizing for not using paper, which although just in- 
troduced from Bagdad or Samarkand, was already the stylish 
material for letters. 

A Persian traveller, writing about 1040, recorded with surprise 
how in Cairo “‘the venders of vegetables and spices are furnished 
with paper in which everything that they sell is wrapped.” A 
physician from Bagdad, writing a century later, tells the source of 
this wrapping paper used by the grocers: “‘ The Bedouins and fel- 
lahs search the ancient cities of the dead to recover the cloth 
bands in which the mummies are swathed, and when these cannot 
be used for their clothes, they sell them to the factories, which 
make of them paper destined for the food markets.’”’ Let us be 
grateful that no paper mill was set up to use the textiles in the 
tomb of Tutankhamen! 


100 THE SPREAD WESTWARD PPayebel 


From Egypt paper manufacture passed to Morocco and thence 
to Spain. The first clear mention of the making of paper in Spain 
—which is also the first in Europe *—indicates already a well 
established industry. It was in 1150 that El-Edrisi said of the 
city of Xativa, ‘‘Paper is there manufactured, such as cannot be 
found anywhere in the civilized world, and is sent to the East and 
to the West.” 

For a century still, the paper manufacture of Spain was alto- 
gether in Saracen hands, though Christians seem gradually to 
have learned the art as the Christian conquest advanced. The 
first recorded paper mill in Christendom was set up in 1189 at 
Hérault on the French side of the Pyrenees, though for still an- 
other century Europe’s needs were largely supplied by paper from 
the Saracen mills of Damascus and Spain. 

So for its first six hundred years paper making was a Chinese 
monopoly, till taught to the conquering Arabs by Chinese pris- 
oners at Samarkand. For the next five hundred years paper mak- 
ing in the West was an Arab monopoly till the Arabs in turn 
taught their Christian conquerors in Spain, and Christendom 
made ready to take the lead. 

Meanwhile paper was entering Europe by two other routes. 
Paper of Damascus was becoming a large article of commerce, 
chiefly through Constantinople, and paper from Africa was enter- 
ing through Sicily. It was probably by the latter route that the 
manufacture of paper penetrated into Italy. 

The earliest extant paper document from Europe comes from 
Sicily. It is a deed of king Roger, written in Arabic and Latin, and 
dated 1109. A manuscript on paper, a part of which dates 
from 1154, is still preserved in the archives of Genoa. Emperor 
Frederick II. in 1221 forbade the use of paper for public docu- 
ments, but the prohibition was not altogether effective. The im- 
port into Italy of paper from Damascus increased steadily 
through the thirteenth century. By 1276 the first Italian paper 
factory had been set up at Montefano, in the same year that wit- 
nessed the first recorded manufacture of paper by Christians in 


Cu. XIII] WESTWARD MOVEMENT OF PAPER 10! 


Spain. Italian paper manufacture spread rapidly, and Italy in the 
fourteenth century soon rivalled and then out-stripped Spain and 
Damascus as the source of Europe’s supply. 

In Germany the use of paper increased steadily during the 
fourteenth century, especially during the latter half, but all paper 
was imported—largely from Italy. Toward the end of the cen- 
tury, when block printing first appeared, South Germany was 
buying its paper supply from Venice and Milan, and the Rhine- 
land from France, though import from Damascus had not alto- 
gether ceased. The use of the new writing material was just be- 
ginning to be general. Its employment was not yet as common as 
that of parchment. Nuremberg, which was one of the earliest cen- 
ters—perhaps the birthplace—of the block printer’s art, has also. 
the honor of being the first place in Germany, so far as known, 
where paper was made.'® This first paper mill was started in 1391. 
The date of the earliest block printing is uncertain, but it was 
probably at just about the same time." 

The slow advance of paper manufacture in Europe, which can 
readily be seen from a glance at the accompanying chart and map, 
is in startling contrast to the very rapid advance of printing 
when it once started on European soil. Paper seems to have ad- 
vanced less rapidly in Europe than it had advanced either in 
China or in the Arabic world. The European parchment with 
which paper had to compete was a far better writing material 
than either bamboo slips or papyrus. Furthermore, there were 
few in Europe who read, and the demand for a cheaper writing 
material, until the advent of printing, was small. While it was the 
coming of paper that made the invention of printing possible, it 
was the invention of printing that made the use of paper general. 
After Europe began to print, first from blocks and then from type, 
paper quickly took its place as the one material for writing as well 
as for printing, though, strange to say, the first paper mill in 
England was not set up till seventeen years after Caxton began 
to print.” 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE PRINTING OF THE UIGUR TURKS IN 
THE REGION OF TURFAN 


HE important position held by China’s western border- 
land in the early history of block printing has already 


been noted. Both the earliest literary references and the 
oldest prints that have been found come from the two far western 
provinces of Szechuen and Kansu, while printed books of the 
eleventh century have even been found across the border in Mon- 
golia. Though the better preservation of documents in such places 
as Tun-huang and Kara-khoto is chiefly due to the climate, yet 
there can be little doubt that the earliest printing centers were in 
the western part of China, and that from this part of the country 
the new art spread not only eastward but westward. The region 
where the greatest quantity and the greatest variety of early block 
prints has been found is the oasis of Turfan in what is now Chinese 
Turkestan. 

This oasis of Turfan, some four hundred miles northwest of 
Tun-huang, is a strange depression in the earth’s surface almost as 
deep as that of the Dead Sea, and surrounded on all sides except 
that toward China by high mountains. An Indo-European people 
developed the first recorded civilization in the Turfan basin, 
going back to a period before the Christian era. In the early cen- 
turies after Christ, Buddhism swept through the region, bringing 
in its train a highly developed literature and art. Manichean and 
Christian (Nestorian) missionaries began coming to the Turfan 
oasis about the fifth or sixth century and their influence soon 
rivalled, though it never displaced, that of the Buddhists, bringing 
into the country a considerable element of Persian and even By- 
zantine culture. In the seventh century the oasis was conquered by 
the Chinese and from that time on down to Mongol times Turfan 


-apunysayjo 4 inf unasnpy 


(‘wo Sof x 11) 
UMOYS aJdY SI JUdUBLAy [Tes v ATUQ “puNog jou pue 2/qv3 
aur Avayjies & ay] pappoy sea ‘potsod oy3 jo aanjvsay1] IsIyYppNg Isour oy] “Yoo ey], “esaulyD Ul 
sroquinu aSed puv yWysueg Ul Saj}oU IvoUTPIAIUE YIM “sysN], NTI] eya Jo eensuey ay3 ur parti 


VuLoASs LSIHGGNdA V 








LEAF FROM A SANSKRIT BOOK PRINTED TO IMITATE THE POTHI 
OR PALM LEAF BOOKS OF INDIA 


Sanskrit manuscripts and even printed books were often made up like 
the ancient books of India that had been written on palm leaves. Such 
books are known as pothi. When the folded book came into use, and the 
hole in the center was no longer needed for binding, a hole was still printed 
in—often a highly conventionalized hole—as seen in this illustration. 
About twelfth or thirteenth century 
(5550 X.33cm:) 


Museum fiir V élkerkunde. 


Cu. XIV] THE REGION OF TURFAN 103 


was usually more or less under Chinese control, though the hand 
of Chinese overlords was rather lightly felt, and the country was 
left to develop its own peculiar institutions. More important was 
the conquest by a powerful Turkish tribe called the Uigurs in the 
eighth and ninth centuries, for these Uigurs soon made Idiqut, 
near the modern Turfan, the capital of their empire, and adopted 
as their own the older civilization that they found. 

From this time Turfan, located as it is in the very centre of 
Asia, may be said to have been a focal point where culture streams 
of all Asia met, open on the south and west to the religious influ- 
ences of India, Persia and Syria, open on the east to the political 
hegemony of China, and on the north forming the cultural center 
of a loose empire that stretched far away over the nomad tribes 
of Mongolia and even Siberia. The Uigur civilization came to 
its height in the ninth and tenth centuries of our era, but Turfan 
remained an important cultural center till after its conquest by 
the Mongols under Jinghis Khan. 

This Turfan basin was first excavated by the Prussian Expedi- 
tions of Dr. Griinwedel and Dr. von Le Coq in the years 1go2 to 
1907. The results of these excavations, including a large quantity 
of woodcuts and block prints, are in the Ethnological Museum at 
Berlin. 

It is the mingling of races and religions that gives to the Turfan 
discoveries their peculiar fascination. Chinese and swarthy 
Indians, Turks and blue-eyed, fair-haired mountaineers of Indo- 
European race, all stand out clearly in the wonderful wall fres- 
coes, while the manner of portrayal is a blending of the art of 
Greco-Indian Gandhara with that of China, not to speak of con- 
siderable Persian or Iranian influence. 

Nor is there less mingling in the domain of religion. Side by 
side stood the churches of the Christians and the temples where 
Buddhists and Manicheans seem to have worshipped together.’ 
All three religions flourished during the period before the Turkish 
conquest, and the conquest of the country by the Uigur Turks 
brought little change, except that Manicheism became the religion 


104 THE SPREAD WESTWARD [Pr. III 


of the reigning house. Christianity was apparently always tol- 
erated and Buddhism encouraged by the new overlords. Islam, 
though sweeping over the lands directly to the west, left the 
older religions in the Turfan basin undisturbed till after Mongol 
times. Manicheism was the religion of the royal house, Buddhism 
that of the majority of the people, Nestorian Christianity that 
of the minority. The Confucian culture of Chinese overlords 
made little impression. 

Needless to say, Turfan was a polyglot community. Seventeen 
different languages are represented among the documents found by 
the Prussian expeditions, including Syriac, Persian, Sanskrit, 
Chinese and a few words of Greek, as well as the local Tocharian 
and Turkish. Some of these appear in as many as four or even five 
different alphabets. There seems to have been a mania for fitting 
new alphabets to the various languages of the oasis. 

Back of all this literary, linguistic and art activity was the 
religious impulse. It is in the ruined monasteries and temples 
that the ancient documents have been preserved. Christian scrip- 
tures, Manichean hymns and prayers, and, more than all, Bud- 
dhist sutras, form the bulk of all the manuscripts found. 

In this melting pot of race, language and religion, with its high 
valuation of literature and art, block printing early found itself at 
home. It has already been pointed out how Buddhism had a par- 
ticular genius for reduplication, and some of the earlier, cruder 
manifestations of that genius as found in the Turfan monasteries 
have been described. It is a significant fact that all the block 
printing of Turfan so far found is Buddhist. As in China and 
Japan, it was the instinct of the Buddhist for repetition and re- 
duplication to which the new art specially lent itself. 

Woodcuts and block prints were found in almost every site 
excavated in the Turfan region. Toqsun at the western edge of 
the Turfan oasis is the most western point at which Central Asiatic 
block printing has been discovered. 

The state of preservation of the Turfan texts is very different 
from that at Tun-huang. In contrast to the neatly piled rolls of an 


Cu. XIV] THE REGION OF TURFAN 105 


undisturbed sealed chamber, the Turfan manuscript treasures 
show signs not only of the natural destruction of the centuries, 
but of wanton destruction as well. In certain of these monasteries 
the floors were littered with papers, all either hacked to pieces, or 
else crushed, piece by piece, by hand. In the monastery at Idiqut, 
for instance, the floor was covered knee deep with this ‘waste 
paper.” One could have carried away many hundred pounds of 
it. In the midst of this deposit were the corpses of several Buddhist 
priests, evidently killed while the systematic destruction of their 
library was going on. Manichean documents were mingled with 
those of Buddhist origin, but, whether by design or by accident, 
they do not seem to have been so thoroughly destroyed. One box 
of this deposit that I examined at Berlin—a box that had re- 
mained packed away ever since it came from Turfan and from all 
appearances might have been the crumpled-up contents of a 
waste-paper basket in a modern Chinese school-room, plus a gen- 
erous accumulation of dust—contained, among crumpled and 
torn manuscripts in Uigur, Sogdian, Chinese and Sanskrit, a dozen 
very primitive Buddhist woodcuts, two printed texts in Uigur, a 
sheet of stamped Buddhas (hand-colored), a Chinese manuscript 
with a stamped Buddha at the top of each column, several bits of 
silk with Buddhist figures stencilled upon them, and a bit of 
printed silk. 

Most of the printing of the Turfan region has had to be rescued 
from such crumpled deposits. But one notable exception is the 
monastery at Murtuk, in which a large proportion of the best 
block prints were found. This monastery seems to be later 
than most of the others. Perhaps its documents were produced 
after the persecuting zeal that destroyed the other libraries 
had spent itself. Murtuk as compared with other sites is 
remarkable for three things—a larger proportion of its docu- 
ments is printed, its printing is better done, and its printing is 
far better preserved. 

Of all the printed documents found in the Turfan region, not 
one is dated. Nor is the approximate dating easy, especially of 


106 THE SPREAD WESTWARD Perfil 


the earlier pieces. With regard to the later ones, it is possible to 
speak with more clearness. There are four fragments in the Mon- 
gol language, also a beautiful large Sanskrit book in Lantsa script, 
and a fragment containing the name of Jinghis Khan—all of which 
could not be earlier than the opening decades of the thirteenth 
century. Moreover, as it is known that the Uigur civilization did 
not long survive the drain on its man power caused by the Mongol 
wars, the date at which the Turfan documents come to an end 
cannot be much later than the close of the thirteenth century. It 
may therefore be said with a fair degree of certainty that a number 
of the best printed pieces—and perhaps a very considerable num- 
ber—belong to the thirteenth century and the opening years of 
the fourteenth, when Uigur printing came to its climax and ended. 
How far back of this the art goes can be only matter for conjecture. 
It may possibly go back as far as that at Tun-huang or further. It 
is certain that there is a large amount of very primitive printing 
and near-printing, which may indicate several centuries of devel- 
opment. Some would assign much of the printing in the Uigur 
language to an early date, because the Uigur civilization rose to 
its height during the ninth and tenth centuries. But all this is 
conjecture. Whatever may be the date at which Uigur printing 
began, there seems to have been continued progress both in 
quantity production and in quality. Late monasteries like Mur- 
tuk are much richer in block prints than the earlier ones, and the 
printing is better. It may then safely be said that there was dur- 
ing early Mongol times in the monasteries of the Turfan region a 
highly developed and widely extended printing industry, which 
had very likely been going on for several centuries. 

Six languages are used in the Turfan blockprints: Uigur, Chi- 
nese, Sanskrit, Tangut, Tibetan and Mongol, the Uigur, Chinese 
and Sanskrit prints predominating. 

The Uigur books and fragments are in the Sogdian alphabet— 
an adaptation of Syriac that had penetrated into Central Asia 
early in the Christian era, and from the Indo-European popula- 
tion had been taken over by the Uigur conquerors. The language 


‘apuny4ayjo4 nf unasnpy 


(ura $*$1 x $9) 
y2Ud93z INO; Ayava to Ainquad yyusayryy, “eseuryD ul saded ajvusaye uo svadde sroquinu ased pur apry 
‘Buoy Jay OM} noe SI ased yoeq ‘vis [esqUed Jo syooq YSo[q ay} jo pazurid Ayadayaad ysOU dU] 


VULNS GNOWVIC LIYASNVS YHL WOU AOVd V 


PabibirleReeBEt bribe PlEL le 
ee ek 
bene Set ain ty abit 


PEEP Elie siek Pelee RriEReB LEE 
BRIERE Ale HERBIER ERI 
sitesi BelEiee RERRER I 








A BIT OF TANGUT PRINTING 


The Tanguts were a people akin to the Tibetans who set 
up a strong kingdom on China’s western frontier during the 
eleventh and twelfth centuries. Their kingdom was de- 
stroyed by Jinghis Khan soon after 1200. Block printed 
sutras in the Tangut language have been found at Turfan, 
at Tun-huang and at Kara-khoto 
(1330 3.6 cin,) 


Museum fiir Vilkerkunde. 


Cu. XIV] THE REGION OF TURFAN 107 


is a pure Turkish, which, though not the direct ancestor of modern 
Ottoman, presents a striking likeness to it. As the books are all 
translations of Buddhist sutras, they contain many translitera- 
tions of Sanskrit names and words. Where this occurs, the San- 
skrit original is printed in between the lines, much as English 
words are introduced in a modern Japanese text. The page num- 
bers in Uigur books are as a rule in Chinese, as is also the title of 
the book, which appears at the side of many of the pages. These 
Buddhist printed books in a Turkish language with Sanskrit 
notes and Chinese page numbers, in a script brought from Syria, 
are in themselves an epitome of the eclectic character of the Uigur 
civilization. 

The Chinese books, of which there are also a large number, 
are as a rule excellently printed in the large bold-faced style char- 
acteristic of the Sung era. They are better printed and easier to 
read than any modern Chinese block books. The Chinese books, 
like those in Uigur, are in the main translations of Sanskrit sutras. 
Both the Uigur and the Chinese books are usually in the folded 
form,? but there are also a few printed rolls, which may very likely 
indicate an early date. 

The Sanskrit prints are of two kinds. The larger number are in 
an older script, which shows little change from that which was 
already in use in Central Asia several centuries before block print- 
ing began. A few Sanskrit prints are in the later Lantsa script, 
which was not in use before Mongol times. The most beautiful 
specimen of printing in the entire collection is a Sanskrit “ Dia- 
mond Sutra” in Lantsa script. Each page is more than two feet 
long by six inches wide, with broad margins and beautiful clear 
print. The titles and page numbers on every other page are San- 
skrit, on every other page Chinese. This Sanskrit edition is 
later than the Chinese editions of the same book found at Tun- 
huang, at Kara-khoto and in Japan, and, judging from the script, 
it may be said with a fair degree of certainty to date from the 
thirteenth century. It has the unique distinction of being ap- 
parently printed on both sides of the page. A close examination 


108 THE SPREAD WESTWARD PPTL Bt 


however, reveals the fact that each sheet actually consists of two 
leaves pasted together with such nicety that the pasting can 
scarcely be detected.® 

This, like many of the Sanskrit printed books, retains the Indian 
form rather than the Chinese. It is a pothi, that is, it is like the 
ancient books that were written on palm leaf in India, many long 
narrow sheets laid between two boards and bound through with a 
thong. 

The printed books of Turfan afford an interesting study in the 
competition that was going on between different book-forms—the 
roll, which was the earlier form both in China and in the West; 
the folded book, which under the influence of printing had gradu- 
ally displaced the roll in China; and the Indian porhi. The one 
form lacking is the stitched book, familiar in the West. This omis- 
sion is interesting, as Christian and Man‘chean stitched books 
had begun to circulate in the Turfan region not so very long after 
their first use in Syria in the fifth century. The stitched book 
reached China early in the Sung Dynasty (about the eleventh cen- 
tury) and most of the printed books of that period from China 
that are now extant are stitched. Somehow the Buddhist has 
never taken kindly to this form. In Turfan it was used in the 
main by Christians and Manicheans; in China it was the mark of 
Confucian and secular literature, and as such it came in time to 
be the usual form, as in the West. The Buddhists always preferred 
the folded book—or sometimes in Central Asia the Indian potht. 
In fact a curious form frequently met among the Turfan printed 
books is a cross between the two—a folded book copied exactly 
from a manuscript pothi, with the old holes for the pothi thong 
copied in the printing. 

The Tangut printing is not extensive. It is in a script as yet 
undeciphered, ideographic and evidently based on Chinese, yet 
differing radically from Chinese—one of man’s very few attempts 
within relatively modern times to create an ideographic script. 
It was the language of a powerful kingdom—radically akin to the 
Tibetans—which held sway in Kansu and adjacent territory dur- 


Cu. XIV] THE REGION OF TURFAN 10g 


ing the two centuries before the Mongol conquest. This Tangut 
printing can therefore be dated with a fair degree of accuracy.‘ 

The Tibetan prints, though not the oldest, are the crudest of 
those found at Turfan. They are mostly charms of two or three 
words each, contained in little clay Buddhas, which have to be 
broken in order to remove the printed charm. 

There are just four fragments of Mongol printing. They are 
bits of sutras, printed in the ’Phags-pa script that was derived 
from Tibetan, and not in the more usual script that the Mongols 
took over from the Uigurs.5 

The Turfan finds include also a large number of woodcuts and 
fragments of woodcuts, without text. These are apt to be on very 
thin paper and rather primitive in workmanship, though there 
are notable exceptions. 

The discovery at Tun-huang of a font of Uigur wooden type be- 
longing to early Mongol times, naturally arouses the question 
whether any of the Turfan printing, especially that in the Uigur 
language, could have been done with movable type. This Uigur 
type will be more fully discussed in a later chapter. All that 
can be said here is that there is no evidence of the use of type at 
Turfan. Nor is there evidence to the contrary. The difference 
between a block-printed book and one printed from such type as 
that found at Tun-huang would be difficult to detect. 

The part played in the spread of printing by peoples of Turkish 
extraction is an interesting study. The tenth century was a great 
century for the Turks. During parts of this century, while the 
Turkish civilization of the Uigurs of Turfan was at its height, 
Turks of other tribes were ruling China, Egypt and the Bagdad 
Caliphate. While this vast territory under Turkish rule, stretch- 
ing from the Pacific to beyond the Nile, did not in any sense con- 
stitute a single empire, and while it is doubtful if the Turkish 
emperors on the throne of China were even aware that men of 
their own race were ruling in Cairo and Bagdad, it was yet 
Turkish individuals—adventurers—who had seized the power in 
all three lands and it was Turkish armies by which they held that 


110 THE SPREAD WESTWARD Beta AI 


power. The founders of the three short-lived dynasties that ruled 
China from 923 to 951 were, like their contemporaries in the 
Moslem empires, Turkish mercenaries, who became sufficiently 
strong to usurp power. The birthplace of these adventurers in 
China was in the region of Hami, not far from Turfan. The home 
of the rulers of Egypt and Mesopotamia was a thousand miles or 
so to the west across the mountains. Yet in language and racial 
affinity they were closely related. 

The fact that the tenth century was a time in which block print- 
ing made such progress—the century of Féng Tao in China, of 
most of the block prints of Tun-huang, and possibly of the earliest 
prints both of Turfan and of Egypt—brings up the question 
whether there is any connection between the spread of block 
printing and the spread of the various branches of the Turkish 
race—an interesting subject for further study. The theory has 
even been advanced that block printing was primarily a Uigur or 
Central Asiatic invention.’ But the little Chinese page numbers 
on all the Turfan books, whether the language is Chinese, San- 
skrit or Uigur, are a sure indication of Chinese workmanship. 
Block printing comes from China. The fact that a larger number 
of early prints have been found in Tun-huang and Turfan than 
in China proper is due to the climate. 

The great significance of the printing of the Uigur Turks lies in 
the fact that the Uigur civilization was taken over in toto by the 
new Mongol empire. The conquest of the Uigur realm was one of 
the first great achievements of Jinghis (A.D. 1206). From that 
time not only did the Uigurs form a large part of the Mongol 
army—they were also the Mongol brains. It was Uigurs who re- 
duced the Mongol language to writing and applied to it their own 
alphabet. It was Uigurs who did such writing as was needed at 
the Mongol court. A Uigur was appointed by Jinghis as tutor to 
his sons “‘to instruct them in the language, laws and customs of 
the Uigurs.”® Under Jinghis’ grandsons, the accountants and 
chief officers of state in Persia and in Mesopotamia were Uigurs.° 
As Turfan, drained of its man-power for the Mongol armies, 


Cu. XIV] THE REGION OF TURFAN III 


dwindled in importance, its culture was transferred bodily to 
Karakorum, and became the basis of such culture as the Mongols 
possessed, till it was gradually displaced at the eastward end of 
the empire by the higher civilization of China and at the west- 
ward end by that of Islam. During the lightning campaigns of the 
Mongols that resulted in the conquest of China, Persia, Mesopo- 
tamia and Russia, it was the culture of the Uigur Turks that fol- 
lowed the Mongol arms. And the Uigur Turks were a people that 
knew well how to print. 


CHAPTER XV 


ISLAM AS A BARRIER TO PRINTING 


Europe, all East Asia was printing, from Nara to Turfan— 
Japanese, Chinese, and Uigur Turks—and through most of 
this territory printing was being carried on on a large scale. But 
between the Far East that printed, and Europe where printing was 
unknown, lay the Moslem world that refused to put its literature 
in printed form. This barrier between the Far East, where all 
Buddhist and Confucian literature was being spread abroad in 
printed form, and Europe where ancient manuscripts were being 
so laboriously copied by hand in the Christian monasteries, 
proved in the end to be not impenetrable, but for a time the iso- 
lation of Europe from the lands of the Far East was complete. 
It is strange that such a literary people as the Arabs—and such 
a religious people—refused to use this vehicle for the spreading 
abroad of religious thought. Paper they found in Central Asia— 
and with almost incredible quickness it displaced all other writing 
materials from Samarkand to Spain. But not so with printing. 
The reason for this prejudice is uncertain. It has been suggested 
that the Moslem suspected hog’s bristles in the brush used for 
cleaning the block, and that to touch the name of Allah with this 
brush seemed to him the height of blasphemy. It is more probable 
that mere conservatism was back of the prejudice. The Koran 
was given in written form, therefore the Koran must always be 
written. Whatever the reason may be, up to to-day the Koran 
has never been printed in any Mohammedan country except by 
lithography. In 1727, when permission was asked by a Hungarian 
by the name of Ibrahim for the erection of a printing press at 
Constantinople, the Ulema under Sultan Ahmed III. delivered a 
verdict that it was against the religion and honor of Islam to allow 


Pe: several hundred years before block printing came into 


Cu. XV] ISLAM AND PRINTING 113 


the printing of the Koran, because the Koran rested upon written 
tradition, and must in no other way be handed down. Permission 
to set up a press was finally given him on condition that the Koran 
should not be printed, and in 1729 ' a history of Egypt appeared, 
but it awakened such opposition that until the nineteenth century 
no more printing was attempted in Moslem lands, and even 
through the nineteenth century printing has had to fight against 
great odds. There was printing done in Syria in the sixteenth 
century by Syrian Christians. Printing had been done in Arabic in 
Italy before the end of the fifteenth century,’ and later the Koran 
was there printed. Catherine II. had the Koran lithographed in 
Russia in 1787. But, so far as known, wth the exception of the 
abortive project of 1729 at Constantinople, the Islamic world 
never printed a book till 1825, when the first press was set up in 
Cairo. 

During all the early period of Chinese printing the Arabic world 
was in close touch both with China and with Chinese Turkestan, 
and before the period was over, intelligent Moslems could not have 
been wholly ignorant of the rdle that was being played by literary 
and religious printing in the lands to the east. The growth of in- 
tercourse across Asia during the T’ang Dynasty has already been 
sketched. There were trade relations by sea, and relations of 
many sorts—largely hostile—in Turkestan. With Western Turke- 
stan converted to Islam and under Arab rule, and Eastern Turke- 
stan a part of the Chinese domain, there was naturally a constant 
interchange—in the course of which paper making entered the 
Islamic world. This intercourse was somewhat retarded by po- 
litical conditions in Central Asia during the Sung period, only to 
be renewed and greatly increased under the Mongol empire. 

The extent of Arab penetration of China at this time is borne 
witness to by the fact that the province of Kansu, the main avenue 
of Arab trade, is still largely Mohammedan, and that the Mo- 
hammedans there, as all over China, have a large admixture of 
Arab blood. In fact all large cities of China and many small ones 
have a considerable Mohammedan population, who trace their 


I14 THE SPREAD WESTWARD PP raed 


descent back to the intermarriage of Arab traders with Chinese 
women during this period of Moslem penetration that reached its 
culmination during the Mongol Dynasty. Commerce came by sea 
as well as by land, the coast cities of South China having been 
great Arab centers, and having to-day also a large Moslem popula- 
tion. 

This peaceful penetration of China by Arab trade is described 
both by Chinese and by Arabic writers, especially by those of 
Mongol times. Chou Ju-kua, who was a Chinese inspector of 
foreign commerce in the province of Fukien some time during the 
half century before Marco Polo’s visit, has left a detailed descrip- 
tion, too hazy for that of an eye-witness and evidently derived 
from Moslem traders, of the various lands of the West from Bag- 
dad to Spain.* From the other angle, Ibn Batuta, writing toward 
the end of the Mongol occupation, gives a wonderful picture of 
how all China was in his day permeated with Arabs. It is no 
longer a tale of marvellous things he tells. His description sounds 
as if such a trip as his were an every day occurrence. In one city 
after another he is met by the Arab merchants and he notes that 
they are always organized under a judge and a Sheikh-ul-Islam. 
But most astonishing of all is the narrative where he tells of cas- 
ually meeting a man at a feast in Hangchow and discovering 
that he and his new found acquaintance came from neighboring 
cities in Morocco, and that they had met a long time before in 
Delhi. The narrative ends, ‘‘I met his brother later in the Soudan; 
how far these brothers are separated, the one from the other.’ 
By the time of Ibn Batuta the world was already growing smaller, 
and considerable information about China was part of the common 
knowledge of those who gathered about the bazaars of Tabriz and 
Cairo and Algiers. 

Yet in spite of all this intercourse with the Far East, Arabic 
books were never printed. Whether, unrecorded and unheralded, 
there was an obscure block printing activity—the making of 
charms or playing cards, is another question and will be discussed 
later. But as far as literature is concerned, the Arabs did not 


Cu. V] ISLAM AND PRINTING I1§ 


print. Rashid-eddin, who was grand vizier of Persia during the 
Mongol period at just the time when Tabriz was the great bridge 
between the East and the West, and who wrote a clear account of 
Chinese printing in his world history,’ seems never to have con- 
templated having his history printed. Instead, he provided in his 
will, and left funds for the purpose, that each year two full copies 
of all his works should be made by hand, one in Arabic and one in 
Persian, until gradually there should be a complete copy in the 
mosque of every large city of the Moslem world. 

Though Arab culture, that so profoundly influenced re-awak- 
ened Europe, knew of Chinese printing, the refusal of its literary 
men to profit by the art made Islam on the whole a barrier rather 
than a bridge for the transmission of block printing to Europe. 
The story of the penetration of this barrier—by the Mongols from 
the East, by the Crusaders from the West—and of the obscure 
forms of printing that succeeded in spite of prejudice in finding 
lodgment in Moslem soil, will be told in the next chapters. 


CHAPTER XVI 


THE MEETING OF CHINA AND EUROPE IN THE 
MONGOL EMPIRE 


did of America, for Islam was a barrier well-nigh as 

impenetrable as the Atlantic Ocean. It was in the early 
part of the thirteenth century that Jinghis Khan and his Mongol 
hordes broke through this barrier, and Europe and China stood 
for a short time face to face. For a century or more—the middle of 
the thirteenth century to the middle of the fourteenth—the con- 
tact between Europe and the Far East was far closer than ever 
before and probably closer than at any subsequent period down 
nearly to the nineteenth century. Cathay to travellers from the 
West was the land of marvels, of wealth and of intellectual cul- 
ture—a land to be looked up to. For one century and one century 
only the way was wide open. With the fall of the Mongols the 
curtain fell, only to be raised a century and a half later, after 
Europe had passed through the Renaissance. 

In the year 1206 Jinghis received the submission of the Uigur 
kingdom and incorporated into his own rapidly expanding state 
the brains and the marvellously eclectic culture that had centered 
about the oasis of Turfan. One country after another was added - 
to the ever-growing empire—parts of North China in 1215, Korea 
in the same year, Khwarezm (Russian Turkestan) in 1223, Persia 
in 1231, the balance of North China in 1234, Russia in 1240, Bag- 
dad in 1258, and South China in 1280. Devastating raids were 
made into Poland, Hungary, Germany, Indo-China and Java and 
a great navy sent against Japan. Almost the whole continent of 
Asia was under one rule, and with it was united much of Euro- 
pean Russia. Roads were built, and armies, mounted on fast 
horses, were continually passing to and fro.' In their wake came 


Mf eterans Europe knew almost as little of China as it 


Cu. XVI] THE MONGOL EMPIRE 117 


trade—overland trade between the lands of the Near East and 
those of the Far East over the Turkestan passes and the Mongo- 
lian deserts flourishing as it has never flourished before or since. 
China and Europe met—a China that for three centuries had been 
printing books—a Europe that was just waking up to the need of 
books. Just at the end of the period of Mongol domination the 
first primitive block prints appeared in Europe. No clear docu- 
mentary evidence can be produced to show how block printing 
entered, but certain phases of the history of the Mongol period 
show points at which Europe was especially exposed to Far East- ’ 
ern influence. Upon these different phases are based various 
hypotheses as to route—hypotheses which are not mutually ex- 
clusive, and which may show a variety of influences to which the 
beginnings of block printing in Europe were due. 


Block Printing in Mongolia 


As already explained (chapter fourteen), it was through the 
Uigur Turks that the Mongols first came in contact with civiliza- 
tion and with the art of printing. One of the first tasks of Jinghis 
after he had received the submission of the Uigurs was the conquest 
of the kingdom or empire of Tangut which had established itself 
for some two hundred years in northwestern China and eastern 
Mongolia. The Tanguts were a people of Tibetan stock, but the 
population over whom they ruled was largely Chinese and Tar- 
tar. Like the Uigurs the Tanguts were printers, using the art 
largely for the duplication of Buddhist sutras. Such sutras in a 
peculiar ideographic character? have been found both at Turfan 
and at Tun-huang, but the larger number have come from Kara- 
khoto, far out in what is now Mongolia, where they were dis- 
covered by the Russian expedition of M. Koslov. Here Buddhism 
was the religion of the state, and block-printed sutras, both in 
Chinese and in the Tangut language, were printed by imperial 
order. With these Chinese and Tangut sutras were found two 
sutras and some paper money? in the language and the character 


118 THE SPREAD WESTWARD [Pr. III 


of the Mongols, showing how the conquerors naturally took over 
the culture of the conquered peoples.‘ 


Printing by the Mongols in China 


As the Mongol hordes moved eastward they were constantly in 
touch with peoples that knew how to print, and as they adopted 
the culture of conquered lands, it was a culture based on printing 
that they adopted. As has already been pointed out,® printing in 
China had just reached its highest point of achievement at the 
time of the Mongol conquest, and during the period of Mongol 
control there was no diminution in the number of printed books 
produced. The Mongol rulers made it a point of honor to see that 
the ancient Chinese literature was printed not only in Chinese 
but in their own language as well. 


The Mongols in Hungary and Poland 


After the conquest of North China, the Mongol arms turned 
westward, penetrating Persia and Russia and even Hungary and 
Poland. In the invasions of Hungary and Poland, Mongol domin- 
ation came nearest to the heart of Europe. The great campaign 
against Poland took place in 1241, immediately after the conquest 
of Russia. Cracow and other leading cities were burned, Silesia 
was invaded, and a combined German and Polish army defeated 
at Liegnitz in German Silesia. So great was the panic throughout 
Germany that the herring fisheries on the Frisian coast were 
abandoned, and, according to a contemporary chronicler, herring 
about the coast of England became so plentiful that they sold in 
the English market for half their usual price. Meanwhile Hungary 
was invaded, Buda-Pesth burned, and the whole country ravaged, 
even a number of cities along the Adriatic coast being sacked. 
Fortunately for Europe, the death of the Grand Khan Ogatai re- 
called the Mongol armies. They occupied Hungary only a year, 
Poland a still shorter time. A second invasion of Poland took 
place in 1259, a second invasion of Hungary in 1285. In these in- 


Cu. XVI] THE MONGOL EMPIRE 11g 


vasions the capitals of the two countries were again burned, but in 
neither case was the occupation of long duration. 

In these campaigns the Mongol armies came very close to those 
places where the earliest block printing activities of Europe during 
the next century were carried on—Venice, Prague, and the cities 
of Bavaria. Did they leave in their wake anything that suggested 
the art? The fact that the earlier and more important campaigns 
were fought before the Mongols had attained a high degree of 
civilization, and that all the campaigns were little more than raids, 
without much opportunity for cultural mingling with the people of 
the land, suggests a negative reply, though the communication of 
such objects as printed charms or playing cards is not impossible, 
and more important printed matter, such as religious pictures, 
may have been in the hands of Uigurs who accompanied the Mon- 
gol armies. 


The Mongols in Russia 


The influence of the Mongol occupation of Russia was far dif- 
ferent. Russia was invaded in 1223, conquered in the campaigns 
of 1236-1240, and held in Mongol hands for more than two hun- 
dred years. While distance required the giving of considerable 
autonomy to the Russian princes, and while Russia was never as 
directly controlled as were China and Central Asia, yet circum- 
stances made necessary a large amount of travel between Moscow 
and the court of the Great Khan. Every Russian nobleman of the 
higher ranks was compelled to go to Karakorum for investiture, 
at least during the early part of the occupation, and many internal 
disputes had to be referred to the Great Khan for decision. 

Throughout Mongol times the market of Nijni-Novgorod, east 
of Moscow, was a distributing center for articles from the Far East 
entering Europe, and here the caravans of China and Turkestan 
came in contact with the river-borne traffic of the cities of the 
Hanseatic league. One section of Novgorod is still called the 
“Cathay Section,” and an important street of Moscow ‘‘Cathay 


120 THE SPREAD WESTWARD [Pr. III 


Street,” in memory of the time when these areas were devoted to 
Chinese merchants and their wares. 

While the hypothesis of Russian agency rests in the main on 
circumstantial evidence provided by the general history of the 
period, there are in addition certain clues, a further investigation 
of which may lead toward more direct evidence. 

The seal cutter of the Great Khan Kouyouk (1246-1251) is 
known to have been a Russian by the name of Cosmas,$ a fact of 
importance in consideration of the close connection that existed 
between seal cutting and block printing. 

Furthermore, de Rubruquis states that the currency of Russia 
under the Mongols consisted of bits of leather or fur “‘marked with 
colors.”? Whether by this is indicated a stamping process or any- 
thing allied to printing—after the analogy of the printing of paper 
money that was going on in the other parts of the empire—is un- 
certain, but in any case the paper money of China and Central 
Asia—parts of the same empire and closely connected by trade 
routes—could not have been unknown in Russia. 

The statement that printing came into Europe from China by 
way of Russia is first made by the historian Jovius in 1550, just a 
century after Gutenberg, in what is apparently the earliest refer- 
ence to Chinese printing in European literature. Jovius’ statement 
is, “There are there (at Canton) printers* who print according to 
our own method books containing histories and rites . 
Pope Leo has very graciously showed me a volume of this sort, 
given as a present with an elephant by the king of Portugal. So 
that from this we can easily believe that examples of this kind, 
before the Portuguese had reached India, came to us through the 
Scythians and Muscovites as an incomparable aid to letters.’’® 


Early Embassies from the Pope and the 
French King to the Mongol Court 


John of Plano Carpini was sent by Pope Innocent IV. in March 
1245 on an embassy to the court of the Grand Khan. He went 
by Prague and Kiev to Mongolia, where he presented his letter 










‘ 


3% 0 TiSIN Gt 










en, 


«. 
* 


itu 





meen 
ae ie pee ae 


SEY ANE WIGHaTINGH I! In | 


I. 


2! SNH QIGH Rais: ooh 
IGH2N HIM GA nIGN HOI AGa Ga tea pelones 





MS Wo Man Sy cman ve 






i 


PY Gol NS ily aye 
Vinay» MAL 


i 


SPCR 0" See} 





A FRAGMENT OF A PRINTED SUTRA IN THE MONGOL 
LANGUAGE IN SQUARE (’PHAGSPA) SCRIPT 


The page numbers are Chinese. Found in the ruins of the old 
city wall of Chotscho near Turfan. Dates from about I 300 
(T4:9sx' 20°cm.) 


Museum fiir V Glkerkunde. 





Cu. XVI] THE MONGOL EMPIRE 121 


and received his reply. This reply—the original—was discovered 
by accident in the year 1920 in the archives of the Vatican. It is 
written in Uigur and Persian and contains in lieu of signature the 
seal of the Grand Khan Kouyouk (grandson of Jinghis). This is 
the first recorded appearance in Europe of an impression from a 
seal based on those in use in China and impressed with ink upon 
paper." The seal was without doubt made by Cosmas, the Rus- 
sian seal cutter, of whom Plano Carpini tells. This letter, written 
in the Persian and Uigur languages, sealed with a Mongol seal 
of Chinese style that had been cut by a Russian seal cutter, and 
sent by the hand of an Italian monk to the Pope, is a typical ex- 
ample of the cosmopolitan character of the Mongol Empire, 
bridging the gap between the Far East and the West. 

In 1248 and 1253 two embassies were sent by Saint Louis of 
France, then in Cyprus on Crusade, to the court of the Grand 
Khan. The leader of the second of these embassies, William de 
Rubruquis, in his description of the journey tells of the number of 
Europeans whom he met at the Mongol capital. Among the pris- 
oners who had been brought from Belgrade and from Hungary and 
who were still living at Karakorum were the nephew of the Nor- 
man bishop of Belleville near Rouen; a French woman from Metz 
named Paquette who was married to a Russian; an Englishman 
named Basile; and a Paris jeweller Guillaume Boucher, who was 
serving as goldsmith to the Khan. Other Westerners at Kara- 
korum in the narrative of de Rubruquis were a Christian from 
Damascus and an Armenian bishop. The knight Baldwin of 
Constantinople had just left the court with another knight 
Templar. All this indicates that even at the beginning of the 
Mongol régime the men who wrote books were not the only 
people who went back and forth between the Mongol court and 
Europe. 

De Rubruquis, while not describing printing, is the first Euro- 
pean writer to mention printed paper money. In the same section 
in which he mentions the leather money of Russia, he says, “The 
ordinary money of Cathay is made of cotton paper, as large as a 


122 THE SPREAD WESTWARD RP rit 


hand, upon which they imprint certain lines like the seal of 
Mangu (imprimunt lineas sicut sigillum Mangu).” ” 


Marco Polo 


Marco Polo was the one traveller in Central Asia and China 
who wrote such a clear account of his travels as to make a deep 
impression on Europe. For this reason a great variety of things 
that have come from China to Europe have been credited to him, 
and block printing is no exception. The story is that a certain 
Pamfilio Castaldi of Feltre, a block printer at the end of the four- 
teenth century, had learned the art from seeing some pieces of 
wood that Marco Polo brought back to Venice and that had 
served for the printing of Chinese books. The story, while not 
inherently impossible, rests on insufficient foundation.’ It is a 
strange fact that Marco Polo’s detailed description of China never 
mentions printing, except in the passage already quoted on paper 
money," and there his interest is not in the printing but in the 
money. If the tradition mentioned above is in any way founded on 
fact, it is more likely that the blocks seen by Castaldi were brought 
from China by one of the many nameless travellers who came back 
to Italy from the Khan’s dominions during the half century or 
more after Marco Polo’s return, rather than by Marco himself. 


European Missionaries in China 


The men of education in mediaeval Europe—the men inter- 
ested in books—were primarily priests and monks. If the bulk of 
all scientific study of the life, customs and history of China in 
later times up to the beginning of the nineteenth century was done 
by Roman Catholic missionaries, the same must have been still 
more true in a day when the laity were largely uneducated. 

The first missionary sent by the Pope to China, John of Monte- 
Corvino, arrived in Cambaluc about 1294, just after Marco Polo 
left for Europe. He remained at Cambaluc as head of the mission 
till his death in 1328. In 1305 he wrote home that he had already 
baptized six thousand converts, that he had built a church in 


Cu. XVI] THE MONGOL EMPIRE 123 


Cambaluc, that he had learned the Tartar language and had 
translated into this language the New Testament and the Psalter. 
The next year he wrote that he had built another church in Cam- 
baluc on land presented by a resident Italian merchant, and that 
he had prepared six pictures, representing scenes from the Old and 
New Testaments, for the instruction of the ignorant, with explana- 
tion in Latin, Tarsic ® and Persian characters. 

In 1307 Pope Clement V. raised John of Monte-Corvino to the 
rank of archbishop, and sent three Franciscans with rank of 
bishop to assist him. They worked for five years in Peking, living 
on a subsidy from the Khan, then moved to Fukien, where a 
strong mission was established and a church built with funds 
given by a local Armenian woman. There were missionaries of the 
Roman Church at the same time at Yang-chou and in Turkestan." 

‘ These missionaries, spending their lives in China, learning the 
language and mingling with the people, must have come in con- 
tact with printed literature at every turn. John of Corvino in the 
first dozen years of his work, even before reinforcements had ar- 
rived, had already translated the New Testament and Psalter, 
and prepared pictures and text for the ignorant, and that at just 
the time when in China it was the natural thing to have every 
important literary work printed. There is no question that the 
Chinese who were associated in the work of translation would have 
suggested that the translations and the pictures should be brought 
before the public in what to them was the usual and natural way. 
Whether the missionaries agreed and thus became the first Euro- 
pean patrons of the art of printing, we have no means of knowing. 
That religious image prints, prepared, like the pictures of John of 
Monte-Corvino, “for the ignorant,” began to appear in Europe 
some time within the half century after these early missionaries 
laid down their work, may not be altogether a coincidence." 


European Merchants and Travellers 


As mentioned above, a Russian seal cutter, a Paris goldsmith 
and a number of other Europeans were already in the middle of 


124 THE SPREAD WESTWARD Ppa tit 


the thirteenth century at the court of the Great Khan in Mongolia. 
Marco Polo tells of a German who assisted Kublai’s generals in 
the preparation of engines of war. But it was during the first half 
of the fourteenth century, after Marco Polo’s reports of Cathay’s 
wealth, that trade between Europe and China multiplied.1* The 
extent of that trade can best be understood by a study of the zeal 
with which Columbus and his successors more than a century later 
were ready to brave untold hardships to rediscover the wealth of 
the “Indies” and find the North-west Passage to Cathay. The 
traders of Mongol times were not men of letters and there are only 
a few data, largely furnished by missionaries, from which to form a 
picture of this early commerce. Andrew, bishop of Zayton in 
Fukien, wrote in 1326, quoting the opinion of Genoese merchants 
at that port about exchanges. Odoric, missionary in China from 
1323 to 1327, referred for confirmation of the wonders he related 
about Kinsay (Hangchow) to the many persons whom he had 
met at Venice since his return who had themselves been witnesses 
of these marvels. Marignolli, writing after his return from China 
in 1346, told of the fondaco or “factories” he found attached to the 
convents at Zayton for the accommodation of Christian mer- 
chants. But perhaps the best indication of the extent of European 
trade with China at this time is contained in a handbook prepared 
by Pegolotti in Florence in 1340. This book, which is a trade guide 
to the various ports of the world, devotes its first two chapters to 
Cathay, giving such information as a European merchant travel- 
ling in that country would need to know—about routes of travel, 
about imports and exports, about currency, weights and measures, 
taxes and duties, etc. Like Marco Polo, the writer of this book 
describes Chinese paper money, even giving particulars about 
rates of exchange, but—like Marco Polo again—what interests 
the writer is not the printing but the value of the paper money. 
There is no record to show that printing was brought from China 
to the West in the wake of trade, nor is it likely that merchants 
would have come as closely in contact with Chinese printing as 
would missionaries and translators. Yet the very fact that, during 


Cu. XVI] THE MONGOL EMPIRE 126 


the half century before block printing appeared in Europe, large 
numbers of obscure men whose names have not been recorded in 
history were moving back and forth between China and Europe 
both by land and by sea, is not without significance. In a later 
period, when the way to Cathay had been rediscovered by Vasco 
de Gama, and trade had been reéstablished—some half century 
or more after Gutenberg—a Chinese printed book found its way 
very quickly to Portugal and was presented by the king of Por- 
tugal to the Pope.?° It is not an unlikely hypothesis that a speci- 
men of Chinese printing or a report of Chinese printing, brought 
to Europe during the earlier period when trade was more exten- 
sive, was one of the influences back of the great block printing 
activity that preceded the invention of type. 


The Mongols in Persia 


The one point at which Europe and the Far East came together 
and mingled most fully was Persia. The significance in the history 
of printing of the interchange of ideas between East and West 
that took place in Persia, and especially in the great cosmopolitan 
center of Tabriz during the enlightened reign of Ghazan Khan and 
under other Mongol rulers, is so great that a special chapter 
must be devoted to this natural crossroads between the East and 


the West. 


CHAPTER XVII 


PERSIA THE CROSSROADS BETWEEN THE EAST 
AND THE WEST 


conquests, the world of Europe and Asia was divided into 

three very distinct cultural areas—Christendom in the 
West, Islam in the center, and the Buddhist and Confucian do- 
main in the East. In Persia during the Mongol régime the three 
for a time seemed almost to coalesce. Under the tolerant rule of 
the IIkhans, Buddhist and Moslem, Christian and Jew succeeded 
each other in the highest positions of the state with surprising 
swiftness, while all races of the known world mingled in Tabriz, 
the cosmopolitan capital. 

Persia was first overrun by Jinghis in 1221, and in 1231 brought 
fully under Mongol domination. In 1258 Bagdad was taken by 
the great Mongol general, Hulagu, brother of Kublai, and Meso- 
potamia with much of Syria and Armenia was added to the Mon- 
gol domain. This brought the Mongol armies face to face with the 
Crusaders. Certain of the Mongol allies even proceeded as far as 
Palestine and sacked Bethlehem, the Crusaders’ chief shrine. But 
as a rule the Mongol Ilkhans (as Hulagu and his successors were 
called) were more or less allied with the Crusaders against their 
common enemy, the Saracens. Constant embassies were ex- 
changed between Tabriz, the Mongol capital of Persia, and the 
later Crusading princes. In the letters that have been preserved, 
the Mongols with true diplomatic courtesy express their deep 
attachment to the Christian faith, and the replies of the Crusaders 
greet them as Christian brothers, as do also letters from James of 
Aragon and Edward II. of England. A number of embassies were 
even sent to Europe by the Mongol rulers of Persia, bearing let- 
ters to the Pope, to the king of France and to the king of England, 


\ROM the days of Mohammed until the time of the Mongol 


"UO1tIp Ty 491ps40) “00d OIAD WY £9[NX 


(Wd OF x OOF 49333] puodsg “wo $z x Cgr 19339] JsaTyy) 
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YONVUA JO UIVA 
HHL dITIHd OL VISUAd JO SUATAY TOONOW AHL WOU SUYALLAT 


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rae ms 
We 








bee ay 





ls 
be. 


Cu. XVIT] PERSIA THE CROSSROADS 127 


and several such letters with their large vermillion seal impressions 
in Chinese characters are still preserved. One of these letters 
written in 1305 by the Mongol ruler of Persia and now in the Paris 
archives, is nine feet long by eighteen inches wide and contains as 
many as five impressions of the Great Seal which the Ilkhan had 
received from his overlord in Peking.! These various Chinese seal 
impressions which were impressed on letters from Mongol rulers, 
and which as a rule were nearly six inches square, were perhaps the 
nearest approach to block printing that Europe had yet seen.? 

In matters of religion the Mongols were always chameleons— 
taking their color from their surroundings. The extent of their 
contact with the Crusaders is indicated by certain phrases and 
expressions that they used. There is a letter from the Ilkhan Ar- 
gon in which the Chinese date (the year of the Cock) is followed 
by the phrase, “In Christi nomen, Amen.” The coins of the earlier 
Ilkhans are inscribed, ‘“‘In the name of the Father, Son and Holy 
Ghost,” and curiously enough the first Moslem Ilkhan, Ahmed 
Tigudar, kept the same inscription.® 

Nestorian Christians, especially those of Uigur race, were espe- 
cially active in bringing about this close relationship between the 
Mongols of Persia and the princes of Christendom. One such 
Uigur Christian, Rabban Marcos, born near Peking, was ap- 
pointed in 1281 patriarch-general of the Nestorian Church with 
Bagdad as his place of residence. His close friend, Rabban 
Cauma, another Christian of Uigur race from Peking, was en- 
trusted by the [khan Argon with an important mission to Europe, 
where as Mongol envoy he visited the Constantinople emperor, 
the Pope, the king of France and the king of England.‘ 

The conquest of Bagdad by Hulagu took place at just the same 
time that the capital of the Mongol Empire under Hulagu’s 
brother, Kublai, was being moved to Peking and the Imperial 
court was becoming altogether Chinese. Chinese influences soon 
made themselves strongly felt in Hulagu’s dominions. A Chinese 
general was made the first governor of Bagdad,’ and Chinese engi- 
neers were employed to improve the irrigation of the Tigris- 


128 THE SPREAD WESTWARD [Pr. III 


Euphrates basin. The Chinese quarter in Tabriz became an 
important section of this new capital of the Mongol domain. 

With the fall of Bagdad, Tabriz soon took its place as the lead- 
ing commercial center of Western Asia, and so remained during 
the latter part of the period of the Crusades. Rashid-eddin, a 
resident of Tabriz at the time, thus describes the city, ‘““There were 
gathered there, under the eyes of the padishah of Islam, philoso- 
phers, astronomers, scholars, historians, of all religions, of all 
sects, people of Cathay, of Machin (South China), of India, of 
Kashmir, of Tibet, of the Uigur and other Turkish nations, Arabs 
and Franks.’”’® Friar Odoric, who visited his fellow Franciscans 
there in 1318, described the place as “‘a nobler city, and better for 
merchandise, than any which at this day existeth in the world.’’? 

The first mention of a European settlement at Tabriz is in 1264, 
when the Venetian, Pietro Viglioni, died there. With the begin- 
ning of the next century trade relations increased rapidly. There 
were treaties in 1305 and 1320 between Venice and the court of 
Tabriz, and the latter treaty gave to Venetians elaborate privileges 
with regard to residence and trade. By 1324 Venice had formed 
the practice of keeping a consul regularly at the Persian court,§ 
and Genoa soon followed her rival’s example. By 1241 the Genoese 
community at Tabriz was presided over by a council of twenty- 
four members headed by the consul. Not only were the Italian 
republics thus represented—embassies frequently arrived from 
other European states also, including France, England, Aragon 
and the Papacy. 

Tabriz is the only place in the Islamic world where there is a 
clear record of early block printing.? In the year 1294 at this 
Mongol capital of Persia there was an issue of paper money with 
text in Chinese and Arabic. The treasury had been exhausted by 
the extravagance of Khaikhatu Khan, and the paper money was 
issued at the suggestion of a financial officer named Izzudin 
Muzzaffar. The notes, which ranged in value from half a dirham to 
ten dinars, were direct copies of Kublai’s, even the Chinese char- 
acters being imitated as part of the device upon them. The Chi- 


Cu. XVIT] PERSIA THE CROSSROADS 129 


nese word ch’ao was applied to them.!° Extensive preparations 
were made for the project, offices called ch’ao-khanahs were erected 
in the principal cities of the provinces, and a numerous staff ap- 
pointed to carry out the details. There was an Arabic inscription 
on each note to the effect that the notes were issued in the year 
693 of the Mohammedan era (A.D. 1294),"! that all who issued false 
notes should be summarily punished, and that ‘‘when these 
auspicious notes were put in circulation, poverty would vanish, 
provisions become cheap, and rich and poor be equal.” The 
prophesy was not fulfilled. After the constrained use of the 
new ch’ao for two or three days, Tabriz was in an uproar; the mar- 
kets were closed; Izzudin, the minister who had proposed the 
issue, became the object of intense hatred, and according to some 
accounts was murdered; and the whole project had to be aban- 
doned.” 

This dramatic issue of a printing project a century and a half 
before Gutenberg in a great cosmopolitan community near the 
confines of Europe could not have gone unobserved in the com- 
mercial republics of Italy. It did not encourage any European 
issue of paper money,” but it did bring bits of printed paper rather 
vividly to the attention of a large number of Europeans. Without 
doubt it brought some of these printed notes as curiosities to 
Italy—valueless as money, but very valuable to civilization if they 
got into the hands of some one of an inventive turn of mind. Fur- 
thermore this issue of paper money indicated that there were arti- 
sans at hand in Tabriz who knew how to print. It seems not 
unlikely that other forms of printing were going on in the Chinese 
quarter of this cosmopolitan city, which formed the natural meet- 
ing ground of Europe and Asia, and perhaps not only in the 
Chinese quarter. What these forms were is at least suggested by 
the block prints of this period that have been found in Egypt and 
that are described in the next chapter, and by what is known of 
the history of playing cards. 

In the year 1295, just one year after the ill-fated issue of paper 
money at Tabriz, Ghazan Khan," the greatest of the Mongol rul- 


130 THE SPREAD WESTWARD [Prot 


ers of Persia, came to the throne and had his court in that city. 
Under him the cosmopolitan character of the Persian dominion 
reached its highest point. He threw off his allegiance (which had 
already become nominal) to the court at Peking, and declared 
Mohammedanism the official religion of his empire. Yet by yearly 
embassies he maintained close relations with the Chinese court, 
and his relations with certain Christian princes in Europe were 
equally close. Ghazan was himself a man of broad education, and 
is said to have been able to read eight languages, including Chi- 
nese, Uigur, Arabic and Latin. 

Soon after coming to the throne, Ghazan called as his prime 
minister Rashid-eddin, and entrusted to him the preparation of a 
history of the Mongol Empire, which was followed later by a 
history of the world," the first history so far as known that ever 
attempted to bring within the limits of one work the records of 
China, of the Near East and of Europe. The world history begins, 
as is natural, with the Creation, and gives a vivid description 
hour by hour of the work accomplished by the Creator on Thurs- 
day of Creation week, in order that he might be ready to rest on 
the Moslem Sabbath. Turning to Europe, the book tells among 
other things of the contemporary wars that were going on between 
England and Scotland, and gives the information that even at 
that time there were no snakes in Ireland. But the part of Rashid’s 
work that touches our subject is the section on China. For there, 
embedded in a short sketch of Chinese history, is the following 
clear description of Chinese block printing. Having described the 
care with which the Chinese transcribe historical and other pas- 
sages from their ancient books, he says: 

“Then, according to a custom which they have, they were wont 
and still continue to make copies from that book in such wise 
that no change or alteration can find its way into the text. And 
therefore when they desire that any book containing matter of 
value to them should be well written and should remain correct, 
authentic and unaltered, they order a skilful calligraphist to copy 
a page of that book on a tablet in a fair hand. Then all the men of 





REPRODUCTION OF ONE OF THE RED SEAL IMPRESSIONS 
FROM THE FOREGOING LETTER OF 1289, BOSSE Ee aeolNG 
OF FRANCE 


The Seal of State, in Chinese characters, from which this impres- 

sion was made was sent from Peking to the ruler of Persia with 

much ceremony by the Great Khan Kublai. The impression is 
nearly six inches square 


‘ule’s Marco Polo. Cordier Edition. 


cain oe 
% hee 
SAA 
xe, 
ae 


TRAN AWE EAA! 
Laud ~ 


w 
Piss 


@. 
=a 


4 
Z 
cA 
j 
Y 
~ 
ig 
Ps 
« 
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z 
e 
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@ 





RUINS OF THE GREAT MOSQUE OF TABRIZ 


Built during the reign of Ghazan Khan and under the direction of the historian 
Rashid-eddin. 


Yule’s Marco Polo. Cordier Edition. 


Cu. XVIT] PERSIA THE CROSSROADS 131 


learning carefully correct it, and inscribe their names on the back 
of the tablet. Then skilled and expert engravers are ordered to cut 
out the letters. And when they have thus taken a copy of all the 
pages of the book, numbering all (the blocks) consecutively, they 
place these tablets in sealed bags, like the dies in a mint, and en- 
trust them to reliable persons appointed for this purpose, keeping 
them securely in offices specially set apart to this end on which 
they set a particular and definite seal. Then when anyone wantsa 
copy of this book he goes before this committee and pays the dues 
and charges fixed by the Government. Then they bring out these 
tablets, impose them on leaves of paper like the dies used in mint- 
ing gold, and deliver the sheets to him. Thus it is impossible that 
there should be any addition or omission in any of their books, 
on which, therefore, they place complete reliance; and thus is the 
transmission of their histories effected.” 

This is the earliest notice of Chinese printing, aside from the 
making of paper money, outside of Chinese sources. It is evident 
that Rashid had a reasonably reliable source of information and 
that the printing in which he was interested was the printing of 
books, especially historical records. Where he failed was in not 
grasping the importance of the new art as an economical means of 
disseminating literature, and in seeing in it merely a means of au- 
thenticating the exact text—a characteristic of Chinese official 
printing that has already been noted, but which Rashid without 
doubt overemphasized and exaggerated. In spite of this over- 
emphasis, Rashid’s description could not have failed to spread 
abroad the idea that books could be produced otherwise than by 
hand labor. For Rashid’s history was a widely read book. Many 
copies were transcribed, both in Arabic and Persian, and deposited 
in the libraries of mosques throughout the Moslem domain,!” and 
at least twenty-six early manuscripts are still preserved, in Persia, 
in India and in the libraries of Europe.18 Furthermore, Rashid’s 
description seven years after it appeared was incorporated in 
another and still fuller world history, the so-called Garden of the 
Intelligent by Banakati, a history which carried cosmopolitanism 


Ke) THE SPREAD WESTWARD iPr ale 


and breadth of view even farther than that of Rashid.'® The 
world of Islam, even if it refused to print books, was not altogether 
unacquainted with the printing of China. It is not without sig- 
nificance that the paper money of 1294, Rashid’s description, 
and Banakati’s history all were issued from Tabriz during the 
quarter century when that city’s commercial prosperity and cos- 
mopolitan character were at their height. 

In this and the preceding chapter there are suggested some of 
the points at which China and Europe met across the Mongol 
Empire—points at which Europe was exposed to the block print- 
ing activity of China and Central Asia. During the middle decades 
of the fourteenth century, the Mongol power in Persia, in China 
and in Central Asia disintegrated, and, some time within the next 
half century after that collapse of Mongol power, block printing 
made its appearance in Europe. No positive documentary evi- 
dence has yet been found to show that block printing entered 
Europe by any of the routes here described, or that European 
block printing came from the Far East at all. But strong circum- 
stantial evidence leads to the conviction that either through Rus- 
sia, through Europeans in China, through Persia, or through 
Egypt (see chapter eighteen)—perhaps through several or all of 
these routes—the influence of the block printing of China entered 
the European world during the time of the Mongol Empire and 
the years immediately following, and had its part in bringing about 
the rise and gradual development of that activity which in turn 
paved the way for Gutenberg’s invention. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


BLOCK PRINTING IN EGYPT DURING THE PERIOD 
OF THE CRUSADES 


), J ERE it not for one archaeological discovery, it might be 
thought that the Arab prejudice against printing had 
completely gained the day. The fact that no books were 
printed in Islamic countries down almost to our own time might be 
held as sufficient evidence that the only instance of early printing 
in the Moslem world was the unfortunate issue of paper money 
at Tabriz. Against this view stand some fifty bits of printed paper. 
About the year 1880 excavations in the region of El-Fayyfm in 
Egypt, near the ruins of the ancient city of Crocodilopolis or Ar- 
sinoé, brought to light great masses of documents. Whether they 
belonged to refuse heaps or to archives of an earlier age does not 
seem to be altogether clear. From this find more than a hundred 
thousand sheets and fragments of papyrus, parchment and paper 
have been brought to Vienna and now constitute the Archduke 
Rainer Collection in the Austrian National Library. They are in 
ten different languages and their dates range from the fourteenth 
century, B.c., to the fourteenth century, a.D.—a continuous 
stretch of about twenty-seven hundred years. The importance of 
this collection in the history of paper manufacture is well known 
to the scientific world. The fact that the collection contains some 
fifty fragments of block printing and that these fragments form 
almost the only evidence of the printer’s art between China and 
Central Asia on the one hand and Europe on the other seems 
largely to have escaped attention.' 

These printed fragments show endless variety. In size they 
range from tiny bits up to pieces nearly a foot long and as wide as 
a column of newspaper. Some are beautifully printed, with per- 
fect alignment and graceful ornamentation; others show the crud- 


134 THE SPREAD WESTWARD (Pr. II] 


est workmanship. Some are on rough paper, others on fine. On 
some the printing is black on white; on others white on black; 
one is printed in red ink. But most important of all from the 
historian’s point of view, 1s the variety in the form of the Arabic 
letters. Here scarcely any two of the fragments are alike. It 1s 
from this that the skilled Arabist can set the approximate date. 
Judged by this standard, the block prints range all the way from 
goo to 1350.* 

With all their variety there are certain particulars in which the 
fragments are alike. They consist entirely of text and simple 
geometric ornamentation, conforming thus to the Mohammedan 
(Sunnite) prohibition against pictures. On the other hand their 
appearance immediately suggests the printing of China and 
Turfan. There is every evidence that they are printed not by 
pressure, but by being laid on the block and rubbed with a brush 
or pad in the Chinese fashion. The language is always Arabic, 
though there is one Arabic prayer, around the edge of which in the 
form of a border is printed a transliteration in the Coptic alphabet. 

In subject matter the fragments are also similar in that they are 
all religious. Some are prayers, some are texts from the Koran 
and some contain special protective charms. One consists of the 
so-called hundred beautiful names of God. The oldest fragment * 
is about four inches square and contains verses 1-6 of the 34th 
Sfire of the Koran, reading as follows: “In the name of God the 
all-merciful. Praise be to God, to whom belongeth all that 1s in 
heaven and on earth. The last hour will not bring us to nought. 
Speak, Verily as the Lord liveth, the hour will come to you. To 
Him who knoweth all secrets, to Him who knoweth all secrets, 
to Him is nothing hid, in heaven or upon earth, even if it be so 
small as an ant. Be it smaller or be it larger, it is yet written in 
the certain book of judgment, that he may reward them that be- 
lieve and deal righteously. But they who seek to weaken our 
tokens, they shall be punished with grievous punishment. They 
to whom knowledge is given see well that that which is revealed by 
the Lord is truth and leads to the way of glory and of praise.” 





THE OEDEST OF THE EGY PPIAN BLOCK PRINTS 


Found at Ushminein, near el-Fayfim. A tentative date of early tenth 
century has been assigned by Arabists on epigraphic grounds. Contains 
the 34th Sdre of the Koran, vs. 1-6 
(TOse aT Tyemn:) 


Guide to the Rainer Collection. 





Cu. XVIII] BLOCK PRINTING IN EGYPT Ins 


There is one large and well printed piece ‘ that contains a sec- 
tion of the Koran and with it, as a very potent charm, the letter 
that Mohammed is supposed to have dictated to Abii Dudshana 
after that worthy had rubbed against Satan in the dark and found 
him covered with porcupine quills. It ends, “Protect the possessor 
of my letter from the influence of the evil eye and from the evil 
look.” Accompanying this charm against the evil eye is the fol- 
lowing conversation between the Talismanic Power and the owner 
of the charm: 


(Talismanic Power): Come nigh and fear not, for thou art safe. 

(Owner): Save me from (blank to be filled out by owner in 
writing). 

(T. P.): When thou shalt read aloud from the Koran, we shall 
cause a thick veil to hang between thee and them who believe 
not in the eternal life. 

(O.): Our Savior is God. Full of bounty is God. Full of for- 
giveness is God. He is the best protector and the best helper. 

(T. P.): I have met and killed him who thought to bring upon 
thee destruction and evil. 

(O.): I place my trust in God, for God looks upon his servants. 


How are we to account for this printing that apparently was 
going on for a very considerable time under a culture that has 
always been known for its hostility to printing—under a religion 
which in 1727 declared by its highest authority that it was against 
the religion and honor of Islam to allow the printing of the Koran? 
On the one hand no books printed, no reference in literature to 
Arabic printing, and a settled hostility to printing when it tried 
later to enter from Europe. On the other hand some fifty scraps of 
printed paper, Arabic in language and Mohammedan in content, 
many of them passages from the Koran, found in the heart of 
Egypt, presenting great variety of form and extending from a 
time that was probably soon after the earliest printing in Central 
Asia up almost to the beginning of block printing in Europe. The 
phenomenon is not very different from that which occurred in 


136 THE SPREAD WESTWARD PrpLil 


China before 953. There an obscure religious printing, deep down 
among the people, spread over much of China and into Japan with 
scarcely a mention in literature. But for the later development of 
the art in China, that early Buddhist printing would have been 
utterly forgotten till brought to light by excavations in the Tur- 
kestan desert. And again history repeated itself in Europe. 
Those early rough image prints, now so carefully treasured as the 
tentative beginnings of the impulse to print, would never have 
been heard of, if there had been no further development of print- 
ing. The early block printing of Tun-huang, of Egypt and of 
Nuremberg are in their essence the same. The language is differ- 
ent and the religion is different, but they all represent the effort 
of the common man to get into his hands a bit of the sacred word 
or a sacred picture, which he believed to have supernatural power, 
but which he could not himself write or paint and could not afford 
to buy unless duplicated for him by some less laborious process. 
In China, in Egypt and in Europe printing was the same in its 
beginnings. But China had its Féng Tao. Europe had its Guten- 
berg. Egypt had neither. In China and in Europe printing pro- 
foundly affected civilizations. In Egypt—owing probably to a 
peculiar prejudice of the learned—it remained, as it had begun, an 
obscure art. 

It is possible that the analogy may be carried one step further. 
Chinese printing during the period of its obscurity met such a 
need of the common people that it spread through a considerable 
area in China, Japan and Central Asia. In the same way the block 
printing of pre-Gutenberg days spread through much of Central 
Europe. It is not impossible that there has been preserved in 
Egypt on account of the dryness of the desert all that remains of 
a more wide-spread block printing activity that extended through 
other parts of the Islamic world. This can only be offered as a 
possibility. Later discoveries may or may not show it to be true. 

As to the origin of Egyptian block printing, it is not well to be 
too dogmatic. That it is connected with the printing of China and 
Central Asia rather than a natural development from textile print- 


Cu. XVIII] BLOCK PRINTING IN EGYPT 137 


ing is the general view of such men as Karabacek and Grohmann 
who have made a study of the prints, and has not been disputed. 
This view cannot yet be regarded as absolutely proved, but it is the 
theory that fits best with such facts as are so far known, and is the 
natural conclusion to be drawn from the technique, from the 
religious subject matter and from the materials used.° 

As to the date of the transference of the new art from China, 
there is considerable difficulty. Arabists are inclined to place the 
date early, somewhere about goo, on account of the script of two 
or three of the prints, notably the one here illustrated. At that 
time block printing was in its very beginnings in China, and prob- 
ably it had not yet spread even to Central Asia. Such a date is 
possible, but a date later in the century, after the printing of the 
Classics and the Buddhist Canon, and after printing had started 
across Turkestan, in many ways seems more reasonable. Yet there 
is the objection that through the Sung Dynasty communication 
between China and the Near East was less frequent than it had 
been in the previous period. Another possible view might be that 
the printing of charms and sacred texts—like so many other 
things—moved into the Islamic world through Persia during 
the Mongol period, and that the few prints which exhibit script 
of an earlier period had their blocks cut from manuscripts that 
were already ancient. There are difficulties with each of the 
various views as to date. The best that can be said is that 
the Egyptian block prints date from somewhere between goo 
and 1350, and that many, if not all, date from the latter part of 
this period. 

The question of route by which block printing may have 
travelled is closely bound up with that of date. If the date is 
early, the route may have been by sea direct from China or it may 
have been overland and connected in some way with the move- 
ment of great bodies of Turks from Central Asia to Mesopotamia 
and Egypt.® If the date be put as late as the Mongol period, 
Persia must almost certainly have been the route, and in that 
case there was probably a block printing activity in Persia even 


138 THE SPREAD WESTWARD [Prete 


more important than that of Egypt, but of which on account of 
the climate no traces have yet been preserved. 

The dates of the block printing of Egypt cover at least a part 
of the period of the Crusades and of the trade activities that sprang 
up in the wake of the Crusades, the time when pious souls and 
enterprising souls from Europe visited the Moslem East as never 
before. As the Egyptian prints came to an end, the block prints 
of Europe began. Texts from the Koran gave way to texts from 
the Bible; and, in accordance with Christian tradition and the 
unlettered condition of those who bought them, pictures appeared. 
What connection, if any, existed between the charms and Koran 
texts of Egypt and the image prints of Europe, is a matter for 
further investigation. 


CHAPTER XIX 


PLAYING CARDS AS A FACTOR IN THE WESTWARD 
MOVEMENT OF PRINTING 


NASMUCH as one of the first forms of block printing known 
| in Europe—perhaps the very first form of printing on paper— 

was the making of playing cards, a study of the origin of cards 
may throw some light on the question of the origin of European 
block printing. 

A large amount of research must be done in Chinese sources and 
comparison made with the history of other games in Arabic and 
Indian sources, before a record can be written with anything like 
completeness or accuracy of the pre-European history of playing 
cards. A few facts have however been ascertained and a few con- 
clusions may be more or less tentatively stated. 

Cards belong to the group of games that had spread over a con- 
siderable part of Asia before the Crusades. From such preliminary 
study as has so far been done, it would seem that the currents had 
passed in a number of different directions. Dice, known in Egypt 
from remote times, spread throughout the Roman Empire, and 
entered China early in the Christian era. Backgammon? and 
chess ? probably originated in India and entered China, with other 
Indian influences, either during the T’ang Dynasty (618-907) or 
a little before. Polo spread from Persia to India and China about 
the same time, and is easier to trace than other games, because it 
goes by the same name, pu/u or polo, with only slight modifica- 
tions, in the various countries where it has been played. The 
confusion of names and the use of the same name for several 
games, makes the tracing of chess, cards and dice very difficult, 
especially in Chinese sources. 

The earliest reference in China to dice, which form the back- 
ground of Chinese playing cards, is in the year 501, and records 


140 THE SPREAD WESTWARD Dewy? BN 


the tradition that ‘“‘Lao-tzt brought back the game when he re- 
turned from the region of the Western Barbarians.”4 We have 
here a feeling that the game was already ancient, that it had been 
introduced from the West, and that it was connected in some way 
with divination or magic—Lao-tzt’s name having by this time 
gained that peculiar association. 

There is little doubt that both playing cards and dominoes 
originated in China and that both games had dice as their back- 
ground, influenced also perhaps by certain forms of divination and 
the drawing of lots and possibly by paper money. There are 
certain indications that the transition from dice to cards took 
place at about the same time as the transition from manuscript 
rolls to paged books. As the advent of printing made it more 
convenient to produce and use books in the form of pages, so it 
was easier to produce dice in the form of cards. These “‘sheet- 
dice,” as they were called, began to appear, according to the 
Tz’u-yiian Encyclopedia, before the end of the T’ang Dynasty,° 
and if this is true, they were one of the earliest forms of block 
printing in China, as they were later in the West. 

With the Sung Dynasty (g60-1280) it seems probable that the 
evolution of these “sheet-dice” took two forms. Some continued 
to be printed on cards, and these grew more complicated, develop- 
ing various picture forms and conventional designs—the ances- 
tors of both Chinese and European playing cards. Others came to 
be made on bone or ivory, and as these were more difficult to 
produce, they remained for some time relatively simple (domin- 
oes), but later these also developed more complicated forms, one of 
which has come to the Western world under the name of Mah 
Jongg. 

The statement of Abel Rémusat, repeated in the Encyclopedia 
Britannica and other authorities, that ‘‘cards were invented in the 
reign of the emperor Hstian Ho in 1120,”* needs considerable 
modification. In the first place such games as cards are not in- 
vented—they grow. In the second place there is a passage in the 
Liao annals that carries playing cards with almost entire certainty 


Cu. XIX] PLAYING CARDS 141 


back to the year 969.7 And in the third place the very authority 
that Rémusat quotes, the Cheng-tzii-t’ung dictionary, adds the 
note, “It does not follow that this class of games originated in the 
Hsiian-ho period.” It is true however that at about this time—the 
time of the removal of the capital to Hangchow, early in the 
twelfth century—begin the first clear and detailed references to 
card playing, references which cannot possibly be confused with 
chess or dice, and which show a widespread and highly developed 
game of cards that continued throughout the Southern Sung and 
Mongol periods. 

Our next sources for the history of playing cards are European. 
In all mediaeval Arabic literature they are, so far as known, never 
mentioned.® Nor is archeology of very much aid, for though two 
Chinese playing cards—presumably ancient—were turned up by 
the German expedition near Turfan, there is no material by which 
they can be dated with certainty. For further clues it is necessary 
to turn to Europe. 

Here again in the early records there is confusion of terms. 
Chess, which had spread from India through the Saracen world, 
had reached Europe with the first Crusades ® or even earlier, and 
had been played for two or three centuries before cards began to 
appear. The Arabic or Persian origin of the European game of 
chess is clearly indicated in the use of such words as ‘check’ (shah, 
king) and ‘mate’ (mat, dead).'!° Certain supposed early references 
to cards in Europe, during the thirteenth century and the early 
part of the fourteenth, are now generally conceded to refer to 
chess rather than to cards." 

The earliest references to playing cards in Europe that can be 
clearly differentiated from chess, follow each other with rapid 
succession in various countries—Germany 1377,” Spain 1377, 
Luxemburg 1379," Italy 1379, France 1392.% By 1397 card 
playing had become so popular in Paris as to occasion an edict by 
the provost of the city, in which workingmen were forbidden to 
play cards and certain other games on working days. In 1404 the 
Synod of Langres forbade the clergy to play cards. A climax was 


142 THE SPREAD WESTWARD [ Packt 


reached in 1423, when a famous sermon against card playing was 
preached by St. Bernard of Sienna from the steps of St. Peter’s at 
Rome, with the result that his hearers rushed to their houses, 
brought such cards as they possessed to the public square and 
burned them. 

A comparison of the dates of the spread of playing cards with 
the dates of the earliest religious block printing is significant. 
The most generally received view is that the earliest religious 
block prints date from the last decades of the fourteenth century. 
The earliest dated print, which shows a more advanced stage of the 
art, the St. Christopher of 1423, coincides with St. Bernard’s 
sermon against card-playing. The period during which playing 
cards spread through Europe corresponded therefore exactly with 
the period of the earliest religious prints. It corresponded also 
with the half century after the collapse of the Mongol Empire. 

The question how early the playing cards of Europe began to be 
printed has been much debated.!”? The consensus of opinion is that 
very early in the fifteenth century or even before 1400, and pos- 
sibly from the time of their first use in Europe, at least some of 
the cards were printed. The printing of cards soon came to be 
an important industry. An edict of the Council of Venice, dated 
1441, indicates that the card printing industry, which before that 
time had flourished in Venice, was already being interfered with by 
outside competition.!® Card makers, who were presumably card 
printers, had already between 1418 and 1438 been mentioned five 
times in the city records of Augsburg and Nuremberg, and at 
about the same time the records of the city of Ulm in Germany 
show that cards were being shipped in barrels to Sicily and Italy. 
By some the first printing of playing cards is believed to have pre- 
ceded the making of image prints, but it seems more probable that 
the two forms of printing developed side by side at about the 
same time, and that they were sometimes carried on by the same 
persons.’ 

In determining the source of European playing cards, the stu- 
dent is faced with a paradox. With the exception of a seventeenth 





AN = OLD” CHINESE PLAYING 
CARD 


Found near Turfan. Date un- 
certain, but probably about 1400 
(9:6 3k CI.) 


Museum fiir Vilkerkunde. 





Cu. XIX] PLAYING CARDS 143 


century writer who claims that cards were introduced directly 
from China to Italy,?? European sources are unanimous in indi- 
cating that the game was derived from the “‘Saracens.”*! On the 
other hand Arabic sources, so far as has yet been discovered, 
never mention the game. From them it would seem as if the 
injunctions in the Koran against games of chance were obeyed to 
the letter. To solve this apparent paradox, it is necessary to 
understand the historical situation. Card playing had been gen- 
eral in China for at least two centuries before it was known in 
Europe. Presumably cards were in common use in the Mongol 
armies and among their camp followers. Chinese, Central Asiatics 
of various sorts, Moslems, Genoese and Venetians were living and 
trading together for a century or more in Persia. Immediately 
thereafter cards spread through Europe from the “land of the 
Saracens.” But card playing had not, like chess, made itself suf- 
ficiently at home in the Islamic world to enter into Arabic litera- 
ture. The game passed quickly and lightly across the Near East 
without leaving any trace in Arabic records. There was no repeti- 
tion of paper’s laborious course of a thousand years from China to 
Europe, for the things that Europe had real demand for—such 
things as gunpowder and playing cards—it got quickly! Further- 
more, the Mongol conquests and the Crusades had intervened. 

Of the connection between the introduction of playing cards 
from China through the Islamic world to Europe and the trans- 
mission of block printing there is no certain proof. The cards of 
China were of course printed. It is difficult to imagine the colonies 
of Chinese and Central Asiatic merchants who settled in Tabriz 
not bringing their games and their gaming habits with them, as 
Chinese have always done in those countries to which they have 
gone in more modern times. It is easy to speculate farther, to 
think of Chinese block cutters (perhaps the same men who made 
the ill-fated paper money of Tabriz) setting to work to make cards 
and thus avoid the long and expensive import across the deserts, 
and gradually adapting those cards more and more to the language 
and customs of the land in which they lived. It is certainly not 


144 THE SPREAD WESTWARD (Pr. III 


difficult to imagine the joy with which Venetian merchants and 
perhaps some of the later Crusaders hailed this new-found game 
and brought it back with them to Europe. And it is not likely that 
the cheap and simple way in which the cards were made and dupli- 
cated would have escaped them. 

But all this is conjecture. What is known with certainty is that 
printed playing cards were in common use in China before the 
Mongol conquest; that immediately after the Mongol period cards 
began to appear in Europe and were recognized as of Eastern 
origin; that, either from the first or soon after, these cards were 
printed; that playing cards were among the first, if not altogether 
the first, block prints in Europe; and that the printing of cards 
constituted an important industry both in Venice and in southern 
Germany in the early part of the fifteenth century. While it is 
not safe to say with certainty that playing cards in coming from 
China to Europe brought block printing with them, the evidence 
is at least sufficient to suggest that among the possible ways by 
which block printing may have entered the European world, the 
use of playing cards holds an important place. 


CHAPTER XX 


THE PRINTING OF TEXTILES 


[oss beginning of block printing in Europe was undoubt- 


edly the result of many influences. In the preceding 

chapters there have been traced certain influences that 
seem to have come into Europe from the East, and especially 
from the Far East; but there were other influences at work 
whose connection with the Orient is less obvious. Foremost 
among these is that of the printing of textiles. 

Wherever textiles have been used, and wherever man—or woman 
—has been pleased to have clothing decorated with patterns, 
there has been a tendency to produce these patterns by mechanical 
labor-saving devices. Certain of these devices have involved the 
transfer of the pattern by the use of wooden blocks in a manner 
that suggests early block printing on paper, and textiles whose 
patterns have been thus produced are generally known as prints. 

While many materials have been used for the making of prints, 
cotton has in general been the most satisfactory, especially for the 
various dye processes used in India and the Near East. It seems 
reasonable to suppose that India, the home of cotton, was also 
the first country where many of those processes were born that 
led the way to textile printing. The very advanced technique of 
the earliest Indian textile prints that have come down to us tends 
to confirm this hypothesis.' 

The Indian methods of textile printing, and the methods which 
spread through Asia and into Egypt, differ somewhat from the 
method that grew up in Europe during the time of the later Cru- 
sades. The Oriental methods were far more complex and varied. 
While the early European textile printer actually impressed pig- 
ment on his fabric directly from the block, with the help of such 
vehicles as oil, resin or albumin, and by so doing failed to allow 


146 THE SPREAD WESTWARD [Pr. III 


the color to penetrate the fibre, the textile printer of the Orient 
had learned the secret of allowing the dye fully to penetrate. 
This latter process was ingenious, and required some empirical 
knowledge of chemistry. What he impressed on the material by 
means of a block was generally not pigment—it was either a resist 
or a mordant. If he used a resist—some substance like wax that 
resisted the action of dye—the printed portions were kept white 
when the fabric was later dipped in the dye vat. If he impressed 
on his fabric a mordant—a substance that was capable of uniting 
chemically with the dye and holding it fast—and if the fabric 
printed with mordant was then dipped in the dye vat, only the 
mordanted portions took the dye and held it, while from the 
rest of the fabric the dye could be rinsed out. 

Still a third process, known as negative printing, has been 
found in Japan, and there are indications that some at least of 
the printed fabrics found in Central Asia were also produced by 
this method. The block is laid on the fabric dry, with another 
block, a perfectly smooth one, beneath. The two blocks with the 
fabric between are then locked together tightly in a vise. The 
upper block has been so prepared that liquid color may be inserted 
through holes in the back and may penetrate to the incised sur- 
faces. When the two blocks are held together firmly with the 
fabric between, the color is applied through these holes and re- 
mains long enough to penetrate the fabric thoroughly. It is then 
poured off, and after a time, when the blocks are removed, the 
pattern of the fabric is found to correspond with the incised por- 
tion of the block.? The process of negative printing could be used 
at will, either for impressing dye-stuff directly on the fabric or 
for using resist or mordant. 

Though there is a statement in the writings of Pliny which indi- 
cates the probability of some sort of resist printing in Egypt in 
Roman times,’ the earliest prints that have come down to us 
seem to date from about the sixth century. These are resist prints 
on cotton, and have been found in Egypt. With them there was 
found a print-maker’s wooden block from the same period.‘ The 


Cu. XX] PRINTED TEXTILES 147 


oldest printed fabric found in Europe comes from Arles in south- 
ern France, from the tomb of St. Caesarius, who was Bishop of 
Arles from 502 to 543. Another textile print, found at Quedlin- 
burg in Germany, which is believed to be from the seventh cen- 
tury, shows a fairly advanced technique, as it contains three colors, 
among them gold. Both of these European prints were apparently 
produced by the Oriental process, and judging from the designs, 
and also from the material, it seems likely that they were im- 
ported from the Near East.‘ 

The earliest clearly dated prints have come from Japan, and 
here too we find at an early period a highly developed technique. 
Among many bits of printed silk that have been preserved in the 
ancient palace of Nara, and which all date presumably from the 
Nara period, 712 to 770, are two in which the actual date forms a 
part of the pattern. The dates of the two pieces are 734 and 740. 
These dates are the earliest examples in the world of block printed 
script, and it is not surprising to find that they antedate by only 
a few years the first block prints on paper from Japan. The de- 
signs of these Japanese prints include flowers, willows, butter- 
flies, pheasants and small birds.* 

The oldest textile prints from China that have been preserved 
are slightly later than those found in Egypt, Western Europe and 
Japan; but in the Tun-huang Caves enough printed textiles of the 
tenth century or earlier were found to indicate that by that time 
the making of these fabrics was an established industry.’ It is 
altogether probable that it had been going on for a considerable 
time, and that the art as practiced in Japan two centuries earlier 
had been brought over from the mainland. Among the Turkestan 
finds also from the region of Turfan, textile prints are not un- 
common, but their dating is beset with considerable difficulty. 
There are indications that these prints of Tun-huang and Turfan 
were produced by the negative process, and that very likely both 
mordants and resists were used. 

It is a striking fact that textile prints should have made their 
appearance in such widely separated regions as Western Europe, 


148 THE SPREAD WESTWARD PPL) 


Egypt, China and Japan at so nearly the same time. It is too 
early yet to put forward with confidence any theory of common 
origin. All that can be said is that in the overland trade across 
Asia textiles bore a preponderating share, and that in the wake of 
commerce a textile printing industry with many common fea- 
tures both of ornament and design seems to have spread over 
much of the country from Europe to the Pacific. 

The printing of textiles made little advance in Europe until 
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. When it sprang up anew 
at this time, it was a different and more primitive form of printing 
than that which had formerly been brought from the East. Both 
the prints themselves and a description written by Cennino Cen- 
nini at the beginning of the fourteenth century,* show that the 
pigment was impressed directly upon the fabric from a wooden 
block. According to Cennini, the printer used two blocks (as in 
Japan), the one above the cloth having the pattern incised, and 
the one below being plain and smooth. But in the European 
process the fabric was held firm in a frame, while the two blocks, 
one in each hand, were pressed together upon it, with the result 
that the pattern was transferred directly to the fabric from the 
raised surface of the upper block. 

It was during the latter part of the period of the Crusades that 
prints of the kind described by Cennini began to spread in any 
number through western Europe. Some prints were produced by 
this process in the Rhine Valley as early as the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries, but in the fourteenth century, at just about 
the time when the first block prints on paper began to appear, 
there came a rapid expansion. In the first place, printed textiles 
began to be produced on a larger scale, and the territory in which 
they were made widened. In the second place, there was greater 
variety in design.° 

Along with these changes and improvements, and along with 
the growth of block printing on paper, there began to appear a 
few textile prints where the picture rather than the fabric was 
the center of interest, prints which were evidently sold not by the 


Cu. XX] PRINTED TEXTILES 149 


yard or ell, but by the picture. These were the so-called picture 
prints. They seem to have been made for use as embroidery 
patterns, though two or three have been found, presumably dat- 
ing from the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of 
the fifteenth, that show a more finished workmanship, more 
nearly approaching the style of the block prints on paper.!° 

That the printing of textiles, and especially these picture prints, 
had a part in preparing the way for block printing on paper, there 
can be no doubt. Whether in Asia or in Europe, textile printing 
formed a background which made the learning of the new art of 
paper printing a comparatively simple transition. In Europe in 
particular the close connection of the textile printer and the early 
block printer has always been recognized, and rightly so. 

On the other hand, it is important to note the distinct dif- 
ferences that have always existed between printing on paper and 
printing on cloth. Not only are the materials different, paper and 
ink as opposed to textiles, mordants, resists, and dye; still more 
important was the complete difference of purpose that showed 
itself in the choice of objects to print. The printer on textiles 
printed designs for ornamentation. The early printer on paper 
printed objects of piety for edification. This is the fundamental 
distinction to be kept in mind. It is equally true in Japan, in 
China, in Central Asia, in Egypt and in Europe. Whether pic- 
ture or text, practically all the earliest block prints on paper that 
have been preserved are religious." On the other hand, with the 
exception of a very few of the picture prints mentioned above, 
none of the textile prints, whether in Asia or Europe, has a re- 
ligious motive. 

While textile printing was one of the influences back of the 
beginning of block printing in Europe, it was not the only influ- 
ence. Other strong tendencies were at work, tendencies of a 
different character, to produce that deeply religious art, so preg- 
nant with possibilities, that sprang up in Europe toward the 
close of the fourteenth century. What those other influences were 
will be the subject of the next chapter.” 


CHAPTER XXI 


BLOCK PRINTING IN EUROPE 


h fourteenth century was the early dawn time of the 


modern world. It is a century that sings with the birdsong 

of new life. Chaucer sang that new life in England in all 
its freshness; Dante had given it a richer deeper note in Italy. 
All over Europe the cathedral builders were reaching their tri- 
umph. In Florence and in Flanders art was waking from its thou- 
sand years’ sleep. In religion the century began with the sim- 
plicity and beauty of the early followers of St. Francis. It closed 
with the deep moral earnestness of Wiclif, Savonorola and Huss. 
Ecclesiastical religion was in captivity at Avignon; the religion of 
the spirit was breaking free. 

Europe had been to the East in the Crusades and had come 
back ready for new things. Travel inspired her; the germs of a 
thousand ideas were suggested to her. But Europe with her newly 
awakened creative genius did not merely copy. She used rather 
the impulses that had been suggested to her to rear a structure all 
her own. 

The new movement was a democratic movement. Its poets— 
Chaucer and Dante—wrote for the first time in the language of 
the people. The roots of the new life were in the cities; Venice and 
Florence, Nuremberg and the cities of Flanders were beginning to 
dispute with the feudal lords their mastery of society. 

It was here in certain of these cities, deep down among the 
people, some time during this century of awakening, that block 
printing had its birth. Just when or where or how it began no one 
knows. Its beginnings were as obscure in Europe as they had been 
in China and in Egypt. From the first, two very distinct lines of 
development can be traced, the playing card and the image print. 
As the story of playing cards has already been told in a previous 


Der Form (ehneider. 


LA A VIVA aoe 
IN WS 

























> 
SQN 
=n 


Sch bin cin Formen (chneider gut/ 
Als was man mir fir reiffen thut/ 
SMit der federn auff eitt form bret 
Das fchneidich denn mie meim geret/ 
Wenn mans deri druckt fo find fichfcharff 
Die BildnuG/wie fie der entwarff/ 
Die fiehe/denn drucktauff dem papyr/ 
RKinfilich denn aug Es (chicr.- 9D 


AN EARLY EUROPEAN BLOCK CUTTER 
PREPARING BLOCK FOR A WOODCUT 


From woodcut by Jost Amman, 1568 


Schreih und Buchwesen. 





Cu. XXI] BLOCK PRINTING IN EUROPE ISI 


chapter, the discussion here will be largely confined to image 
prints and their later developments. 

The point of departure is a picture of St. Christopher, which 
bears on its face the clear date of 1423. There is no reason for 
supposing that this is the oldest of the several hundred image 
prints that have come down to us, but it is one of the very few 
that bear dates, and of those few it is the earliest. When the 
making of such prints actually began is much disputed. Some 
carry the beginnings of the art back nearly to 1300. Others place 
the date nearer 1400 or even after the opening of the new century. 
The weight of evidence seems to favor the latter decades of the 
fourteenth century as the period when block printing in Europe 
began. 

These image prints have been found in the main in monasteries 
of southern Germany, though some are of Flemish origin, and from 
documentary evidence it is clear that Venice was another early 
center of production.1 By the time of Gutenberg the making of 
image prints seems to have spread over most of central Europe. 

There are certain marked characteristics that these early prints 
have in common. They are all religious—rude drawings of scenes 
from the Bible or from the lives of the saints. They are in general 
printed in outline, to be filled in with color either by hand or by 
stencil. They are usually crude in workmanship, prepared for 
those who could not afford better pictures. The purpose which 
many at least of the image prints served—and which reminds 
one strangely of the charms with which printing in the Far East 
began—is indicated in the two lines of script that appear beneath 
the picture of St. Christopher, of which the following is a rough 
translation: 


“In whatsoever day thou seest the likeness of St. Christopher, 
In that same day thou wilt from death no evil blow incur.” 


The line of development from the image print to the block book 
is not difficult to trace. The earlier image prints are without text. 
Then come pictures with text beneath. Soon the practice began of 


152 THE SPREAD WESTWARD [Pr. III 


pasting these pictures on the pages of a book and writing under 
each one a few words of explanation. Finally printed pictures with 
printed text were made up together into books, the printing being 
done on one side of the page and the blank pages folded together, 
as in the books of China. There is some controversy as to when 
the first of these block books were produced. Of those that bear 
dates there is none that antedates the earliest work of Gutenberg. 
The making of block books went on parallel with typography up 
to the early years of the sixteenth century. The weight of evidence 
however seems to indicate that the earliest undated block books 
preceded by at least a few years the earliest books printed from 
type and that they were one of the influences suggesting the idea 
that whole books could be printed. According to one theory—the 
one accepted in the article on typography in the Encyclopedia 
Britannica—the inventor of typography was himself first a maker 
of block books. 

The importance of block printing as the precursor of typography 
has long been recognized.? It remains to carry the question back 
and inquire what were the impulses that lay back of block print- 
ing—why at the end of the fourteenth century men began to 
make inked impressions on paper that in a short time developed 
into printed books. It may safely be said that there were four 
main impulses which combined to produce block printing and 
which finally culminated in typography, (a) the demand created by 
an awakening intellectual life, (b) the strong and inexpensive 
material, paper, which was just coming into general use, (c) ana/o- 
gous practices already in vogue in Europe, such as seal cutting and 
textile printing, that made the new art easy to learn, and (d) some 
impulse from without that determined the direction the new art 
should take, both as to design and as to technique. 

In all these factors the Crusades and renewed contact with the 
East played an important part. Europe, whose intellectual life 
had been largely dormant through the Dark Ages, flung herself 
with abandon against the older civilization of the East. The strug- 
gle affected Europe more than it did the East. Influences from 


Cu. XXI] BLOCK PRINTING IN EUROPE 153 


Byzantium and from the Islamic world, echoes from ancient 
Greece preserved in the lands of the East, all surged back into 
Europe in a great flood. The very fact of travel, the constant 
meeting of new experiences, awakened all the latent powers of 
Christendom. It was this new life surging through the Western 
world that was after all the most important of the various factors 
in the preparation for printing. 

In this new life current that swept through Europe in the four- 
teenth century there were also influences from the Far East that 
had their part, influences as strong—and as obscure—as gun- 
powder and the Black Death, both of which apparently spread 
from the Pacific to the Atlantic during this century and arrived in 
Europe about the same time. Throughout the century marin- 
ers in the Mediterranean as well as in waters further east were in 
fear and trembling experimenting with the mysterious magnetic 
needle, preparing for the great age of discovery that was about to 
set in. But more important than gunpowder or plague or com- 
pass was the advance of paper. At the opening of the century 
paper was a fairly rare material, imported from Damascus and 
Spain, and being turned out in small quantities from two or three 
mills newly established in Italy. By the end of the century it was 
being manufactured in Italy, France, Spain and southern Ger- 
many, and had largely displaced parchment as the writing mate- 
rial of all but the wealthy.* It was paper that made printing worth 
while. There would have been little use in a cheap method of du- 
plication, if the only material available had been as expensive as 
sheepskin. Gutenberg’s Bible was one of the few early books 
printed on parchment, and each copy of Gutenberg’s Bible is 
said to have required the skins of three hundred sheep.* Without 
a cheaper material to print on, the invention of printing would 
have been abortive. 

In addition to influences from the East, Europe had within her 
own borders certain processes that made the transition to block 
printing natural and easy, Egypt and Babylon had already in 
ancient times used wooden blocks to stamp their bricks; Rome had 


164 THE SPREAD WESTWARD [Pr. II 


had dies for making coins, engraved seals for impressing wax, 
and metal letters for branding cattle and slaves; the Middle Ages 
had added the art of textile printing. When Europe was ready for 
the next great advance, there were men with hands trained who 
readily transferred their skill to the new art. 

The beginnings of the intellectual awakening created the de- 
mand for printing; China—by way of Damascus and Spain— 
furnished the material; textile printing and other similar prac- 
tices gave the requisite skill. The fuel was ready—all that was 
needed was to apply the match. A study of the facts concerned 
leads with a very fair degree of certainty to the conclusion that 
that final impulse came from China. 

In the first place the way was open. It was in the first half of 
the fourteenth century that the Central Asian trade routes, and 
the sea routes to Cathay as well, were wide open as never before. 
It was in this same half century that John of Monte-Corvino and 
his followers were engaged in missionary work and translating 
Christian books in Cathay. It was during this half century that 
Tabriz attained its greatest fame as a cosmopolitan center, with 
its colonies of Genoese and Venetians, of Uigurs, Mongols and 
Chinese, and that Rashid at Tabriz wrote his description of 
Chinese printing. It was at this same time that Mongol Russia 
rivalled Persia as a pathway to the Far East. For this was the 
time when the Mongol power was supreme from the Euphrates and 
the Volga to the Pacific. And it was just at the close of this period 
of wide open intercourse that block printing in Europe had its be- 
ginnings. 

An examination of the prints themselves, the materials used, 
the technique, and their general character, leads naturally to the 
conclusion that this intercourse bore fruit. Textile printers had 
used various dyes, preferring, as a rule, the brightest colors. 
The printers on paper (itself a Chinese material) from the first 
used ink, and their ink was made almost exactly like that of China, 
from lamp black and gum, dissolved in water. The use of oil as a 
dissolving agent, which was one of the factors that made the work 


Cu. XXI] BLOCK PRINTING IN EUROPE 155 


of Gutenberg a success, and which probably began in Korea a few 
years before Gutenberg, had not yet been discovered either in 
Asia or in Europe. As to the method by which the European block 
prints were produced, the consensus of opinion is that it too was 
very similar to that of China. A block of wood with the desired 
picture or text cut in relief was inked and held in one hand; the 
paper was laid on it with the other and rubbed with a brush or 
frotton. There was no press. Neither were there two blocks, as 
in the printing of textiles. As a result of their similarity of tech- 
nique, both European and Chinese block prints are printed on 
one side of the paper only.’ Furthermore, both in the European 
prints and in very many of the Buddhist prints of Central Asia, 
color was later applied either by hand or by means of a stencil. 

But the most striking fact about the early European prints is 
the choice of subject. Those that have come down to us, aside 
from playing cards, are all of one kind—religious image prints.° 
The printers of textiles had made designs—geometric designs, 
animal designs, heraldic designs: those who used paper as a 
material produced religious pictures. These image prints were 
the patron saints, the bringers of good luck, prepared for humble 
folk, just as were the Buddha prints of Central Asia and the 
printed talismans of Egypt. They satisfied the religious instinct of 
the common man, as playing cards, the one other sort of early 
printing of which we have record, satisfied his play instinct. 
Hence they were needed in quantity. If block printing had been a 
natural development from textile printing without outside influ- 
ence, we might expect a certain continuity of design. Instead we 
have continuity with Central Asia and China rather than with 
European textiles.’ 

This continuity with China did not end with the appearance of 
the first primitive prints. Printing in Europe as in China soon 
developed into the making of books—into an art that affected the 
whole life of the people. It is true that in Europe block printing, 
as not suited to the Roman alphabet, soon proved abortive and 
that the great development came only with typography. But the 


156 THE SPREAD WESTWARD [Pratl 


significant thing is that Europe, following the path of China, 
quickly advanced from the primitive stage to a method for the 
wide dissemination of books and of education. 

The way between Europe and the Far East was open, an exam- 
ination of the earliest printing, both image prints and playing 
cards, naturally suggests a close connection, and later develop- 
ments in Europe and in China were in the same direction. The 
circumstantial evidence is strong. The one bit of early direct evi- 
dence, that of Jovius, has been referred to in an earlier chapter.® 
Until further and more convincing direct evidence can be found, 
the case cannot be considered as absolutely proved. Yet the con- 
trary view is far more difficult to believe—the view that, with such 
intercourse as there was between Europe and the Far East, a 
practice so similar in its various manifestations should have arisen 
in the two parts of the world altogether independently. While 
keeping an open mind for further light, it will be safe to accept as 
a working hypothesis the view that Chinese influence was not 
only seen in the use of paper, but was the final determining factor 
in the ushering in of European block printing. 


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CHAPTER XXII 


THE INVENTION OF MOVABLE TYPE IN CHINA 


HILE the T’ang Dynasty (618-go7) has a freshness that 

\) \) reminds one of the Elizabethan Age, the time of the 

Sung emperors (960-1280) has a polish, a love of system 
and a scientific spirit that are essentially Victorian. The Sung 
mind was that of the modern man. Accounts written at this time 
of the early history of the human race have about them an evo- 
lutionary flavor seldom met with in Europe till the last century, 
while the financial and social reforms of Wang An-shih fore- 
shadowed Karl Marx. In spite of political upheaval and financial 
chaos, science and philosophy went forward. 

Nowhere is this progress more marked than in the realm of 
printing, which was itself one of the causes of the spirit of advance. 
It was in 953, seven years before the Sung Dynasty began, that 
under Féng Tao’s administration the Confucian Classics were 
finally published and the era of large scale official and secular 
printing inaugurated. The rapid printing of all sorts of books that 
immediately began in the wake of Féng Tao’s epoch-making pub- 
lication naturally made men think of improved methods of pro- 
ducing printed books. 

One experiment was in the use of metal blocks instead of wood. 
As the characters were not cut into the metal, as in modern engrav- 
ing, but stood out in relief as in the wooden block, printing done 
with such metal plates cannot be easily distinguished from ordi- 
nary block prints, and it is uncertain how extensively metal plates 
were used. There are only a few references to this process in liter- 
ature.! 

Far more important was the experimentation that began early 
in the Sung Dynasty with movable type. Fortunately we have a 


160 MOVABLE TYPE [Pr. IV 


clear account of this invention written by a contemporary writer, 
Shén Kua, whose description bears the marks of an eye-witness, 
and the authenticity of whose writings is unchallenged. 

“Under the T’ang Dynasty,” writes Shén Kua, “block printing, 
though carried on, was not fully developed. In the time of Féng 
Ying-wang (Féng Tao), first the Five Classics and then in general 
all the ancient canonical works were printed. 

“During the period Ch’ing-li (1041-1049) Pi Shéng,? a man in 
cotton cloth (i.e., a man of the common people),? made also mov- 
able type. His method was as follows: He took sticky clay 4 and 
cut in it characters as thin as the edge of a cash.’ Each character 
formed as it were a single type. He baked them in the fire to 
make them hard. He had previously prepared an iron plate and he 
had covered this plate with a mixture of pine resin, wax and paper 
ashes.? When he wished to print, he took an iron frame 8 and set it 
on the iron plate. In this he placed the type, set close together. 
When the frame was full, the whole made one solid block of type. 
He then placed it near the fire to warm it. When the paste [at the 
back] was slightly melted, he took a perfectly smooth board and 
rubbed over the surface, so that the block of type became as even 
as a whetstone. 

“If one were to print only two or three copies, this method 
would be neither convenient nor quick. But for printing hundreds 
or thousands of copies, it was marvellously (lit. “divinely’’) 
quick. As a rule he kept two forms going. While the impression 
was being made ® from the one form, the type were being put in 
place on the other. When the printing of the one form was fin- 
ished, the other was all ready. In this way the two forms alter- 
nated and the printing was done with great rapidity. 

“For each character there were several type, and for certain 
common characters !° there were twenty or more type each, in 
order to be prepared for the repetition of characters on the same 
page. When the characters were not in use, he had them arranged 
with paper labels, one label for each rhyme," and thus kept them 
in wooden cases. If any rare character appeared that had not been 


Cu. XXII] IN. CHINA 161 


prepared in advance, it was cut as needed and baked with [a fire 
of] straw. In a moment it was finished. | 

“The reason why he did not use wood is because the tissue of 
wood 2 is sometimes coarse and sometimes fine, and wood also 
absorbs moisture, so that the form when set up would be uneven. 
Also the wood would have stuck in the paste and could not readily 
have been pulled out. So it was better to use burnt earthenware. 
When the printing was finished, the form was again brought near 
the fire to allow the paste to melt, and then brushed with the hand, 
so that the type fell of themselves and were not in the least soiled 
with clay. 

“When Pi Shéng died, his font of type passed into the posses- 
sion of my followers,"* and up to this time it has been kept as a 
precious possession.’’4 

Shén Kua, the writer of this careful description, lived from 1030 
to 1093. He was therefore a boy in his teens at the time of Pi 
Shéng’s invention. His book, Méng-ch’i-pi-t’an, or Essays from 
the Torrent of Dreams, describes many natural phenomena, and 
contains the earliest clear description of the compass, as well as 
this contemporary account of the world’s first attempt at typog- 
raphy. He is regarded as one of the most accurate of the Sung 
writers. If the text of the older edition is the correct one, he must 
have been a personal friend or acquaintance of Pi Shéng, the one 
in whose hands (or in the hands of whose “ followers’’) the font of 
type was left at the inventor’s death." 


During the period of the Mongol Dynasty, in the year 1314, a 
brief review of the history of movable type up to date was written 
by a man named Wang Chéng."* Starting with the invention of 
block printing (which according to the generally accepted view he 
assigned to Féng Tao’s time), he proceeded to tell of Pi Shéng’s 
invention and the type made first of earthenware and then of tin 
that followed it, and finally described in detail the wooden type of 
his own day and a device which he himself had perfected for the 
setting of type. The following is Wang Chéng’s statement: 


162 MOVABLE .TYPE [Pr. IV 


“Tn ancient times all books were manuscripts. The learned 
found the spreading abroad of books by copying a difficult mat- 
ter, and the keeping of books was considered a thing that required 
wealth. 

“During the period of the Five Dynasties, in the year 931, the 
prime minister Féng Tao, together with Li Yu, memorialized the 
emperor, requesting that orders be given to the director of the 
National Academy, T’ien Min, to revise and correct the Nine 
Classics, to have them cut on wooden blocks and printed and to 
have copies sold. The emperor gave the order. This was the be- 
ginning of printing from wooden blocks.!7 Following this the use 
of printed literature became general throughout the empire. 
There was however a great outlay for blocks and for labor, so that 
sometimes the blocks for a single book, unless great energy was 
used, were not completed till after some years had elapsed. Al- 
though there were books that were well worth printing, they often 
could not be produced and published because the cost of labor was 
lacking. 

““At a later period there was a man who invented a wonderful 
device. He made out of iron 8 a composition form for keeping the 
columns distinct, over which he poured liquid tar !° which became 
hard when cooled. When this had been held over a slow fire and 
slightly melted, he placed in the form earthenware type that had 
been thoroughly hardened by burning, and so out of movable type 
he made blocks for printing. Inasmuch as his method was not al- 
together practicable, a step forward was taken later by making 
the compositor’s form of earthenware, and setting the type of 
burnt earthenware in it in thin clay. When this form full of burnt 
clay type had been placed in the fire and also burned till the whole 
had become one solid mass, it could be used for printing just like 
any wooden block. 

“In more recent times, type have also been made of tin by 
casting.?° These are strung on an iron wire, and thus made fast in 
the columns of the form, in order to print books with them. But 
none of these type take ink readily, and they rapidly deteriorate 





THE REVOLVING WHEEL 


Typesetting device described by Wang Chéng in 1314. From 

edition of Ch’ien Lung’s reign (1736-1796). Whether this illustra- 

tion goes back to the original edition of 1314 or whether it is a 

reconstruction by Ch’ien Lung’s editors, is uncertain. In either 
case it shows the device which Wang Chéng described 


Liu An. 





WOODEN TYPES OF THE EARLY FOURTEENTH CENTURY 
AND IMPRESSIONS FROM THEM 


These types, found by Professor Pelliot in one of the Caves of 
the Thousand Buddhas, date from about the year 1300. They 
are in the language of the Uigur Turks. Each type represents 
a word 
(Height to paper 2.2 cm.; width 1.3 cm.; length varying from 
1.0 cm. to 2.6 cm. according to length of word) 


Metropolitan Museum, New York. 


IMPRESSIONS FROM THE WOODEN TYPES OF THE EARLY 
FOURTEENTH CENTURY IN THE UIGUR LANGUAGE 


Gusman. 


Cu. XXIT] IN CHINA 163 


in the course of printing. For that reason they cannot be used 
long. 

“Now, however, there is another method that is both more 
exact and more convenient. A compositor’s form is made of 
wood,! strips of bamboo are used to mark the lines and a block is 
engraved with characters. The block is then cut in squares with a 
small fine saw till each character forms a separate piece. These 
separate characters are finished off with a knife on all four sides, 
and compared and tested till they are exactly the same height 
and size. Then the type are placed in the columns [of the form] 
and bamboo strips which have been prepared are pressed in be- 
tween them. After the type have all been set in the form, the 
spaces are filled in with wooden plugs, so that the type shall be 
perfectly firm and shall not move. When the type are absolutely 
firm, the ink is smeared on and printing begins. 

“The Writing of the Rhymes and the Cutting of the Type. 
First, a division is made of all characters into the five tones and 
into rhyme sections according to the official Book of Rhymes. 
According to this arrangement, a complete copy of the characters 
in that book is made. A skilful calligrapher is chosen who picks 
some writing which shall serve as model for the type. In accord- 
ance with exact measurements as to size, he writes one copy of 
every character. These are pasted on the wooden block, and a 
workman is ordered to engrave them. A little space is left between 
the characters for sawing. For each auxiliary, numeral and other 
specially common word, there is a larger number of type made. 
In all, somewhat more than thirty thousand type are needed. 
When the patterns have been written, the type are made as dis- 
scribed above. 


“The Sawing and Finishing of the Type. After the engraving of 
the characters on the wooden block, each single character is cut 
on all sides with a small fine-toothed saw, and the type are then 
put in a wicker basket. Next, the type are finished off with a 
small knife until they are alike and exact. After that they are sub- 


164 MOVABLE TYPE PPrSLvi 


jected to careful measurement, and by this measurement are 
tested for exact uniformity in size and height. Finally they are 
put away in a special container. 

“The Cases and the Placing of the Type in them. The type 
from the various sections of the official Book of Rhymes are ar- 
ranged in wooden cases and held in rows with bamboo strips. 
After they are all laid in, they are lightly kept in place with 
wooden plugs, and arranged upon a revolving table (lit., 2 whee/). 
The division is according to the five tones, as described above, and 
large characters are used for labels. 

“The Making of the Revolving Table. Out of light wood a 
large table top is made, about seven feet in diameter. The central 
leg of the table (lit., the axle of the wheel) is about three feet high. 
On the floor there is a large wooden pedestal with holes bored in it. 
The leg of the table fits in the center of one of these holes, and is 
strengthened with wooden braces, while in the bottom of the ta- 
ble top there is a cavity * for the shaft ** [of the table leg] in order 
that the entire top of the table may revolve. Upon the table is a 
round bamboo frame in which the movable type are kept. Each 
section of the table is numbered, the numbering going from top to 
bottom. As a rule, two such tables are provided. Upon the one 
are the type from the official Book of Rhymes. Upon the other 
are the special type (i.e., the selection of most usual characters). 
Between the two sits a man, who is able to turn the tables either 
to right or to left and to take out the type. For if the man had to 
go about and seek for the type, it would be difficult, but when the 
type come to the man, it is easy. By the use of this revolving 
wheel, without putting forth any effort, just by sitting still, the 
typesetter can select the type wanted, and again, after they have 
been used, put them back in their proper rhyme-compartments— 
both of which things are very convenient. 

“The Setting up of the Type. A special list of characters is 
written according to the Book of Rhymes with the characters all 
numbered. Each section of the two revolving tables, each row and 
each type is then numbered to correspond to this list. A man 


Cu. XXII] IN CHINA 165 


holds the rhyme list and calls for the type by number. Another 
takes the type from the compartments on the table and places 
them directly in the form for the printing of the book. Unusual 
characters that are not found in the Book of Rhymes, are made by 
the wood-cutter as needed, so that everything may be complete. 

“The Construction of the Form, the Fixing of the Type in it, 
the Application of the Ink and the Printing. Select a smooth, dry 
block. Estimate the dimensions of the book [to be printed] and 
make about the four edges of the block a [wooden] edging. Leave 
the right hand edge open until the form is full, then mount this 
edging also and fasten tightly with wooden plugs. The type within 
the columns of the form must be so fixed that they are exactly 
even and correct, one with the other. For this purpose there are 
prepared in advance little slivers of bamboo of various sizes, 
which are kept in a special receptacle. If the type do not stand 
exactly even in the form, these bits of bamboo are wedged in. 
Not until the type stand absolutely even and firm is printing 
begun. The inking of the form must be done with a brush down 
the columns. Care must be taken that the inking be done ver- 
tically and never across. Finally for taking the impression upon 
paper the columns must likewise be rubbed with a brush from the 
top down.*® 

“This is a description of how the use of movable type was 
fixed. 

“When I was district magistrate in charge of the magistracy of 
Ching-té in the district of Hstian-chou, | composed the Book of 
Agriculture. However, inasmuch as the number of characters 
used in that book was very large, I found difficulty in having it 
printed from blocks. I therefore followed an idea of my own and 
had artisans make for me movable type. This work was finished 
in two years. Then as an experiment I printed the official records 
of the district,?” using for the purpose about sixty thousand type 
or more. In less than a month a hundred copies were completely 
ready and were exactly like books printed from blocks. This was 
for me a proof of the practicability of my system. 


166 MOVABLE TYPE fProty 


“Two years later I was transferred to the magistracy of Yung- 
féng in the district of Hsin-chou, and when I went to my new 
office I took the type with me. At this time the Book of Agricul- 
ture had just been finished and I wished to have it printed with 
movable type. I then found out, however, that printers in the 
province of Kiangsi had already begun to cut the blocks for this 
work. Therefore I laid the type aside in order to await another 
opportunity for their use. But inasmuch as I have never seen this 
method described either in ancient or modern times, I therefore 
describe it here for the sake of all those who are interested in such 
things, hoping thus to pass on to future generations this simple 
and easy method of printing. Inasmuch as the occasion for the 
discovery of the method was the writing of the Book of Agricul- 
ture, I describe the method here at the close of this book.” 

Such is the description of type production and typesetting that 
was written in the year 1314, during the period of Mongol domina- 
tion, and about twenty years after Marco Polo’s return to Venice. 

It is worth while to note what steps have here been made in the 
direction of modern printing and what great gaps remain to be 
filled. This achievement of Wang Chéng’s depends in the main 
on two factors, the production of type of such a form that they 
could be made to fit together in a perfectly even and rigid block, 
and such systemization and mechanical arrangement of the sym- 
bols of the script as to make typesetting possible. The achieve- 
ment of these two things makes the invention here described an 
epoch-making step forward in the history of printing. On the other 
hand there are three important features which contributed to make 
the work of Gutenberg a success but which were lacking in the 
Chinese method—the type mould, alphabetic type, and the press. 
The type mould—and with it the use of metal type—was per- 
fected either in China or Korea during the following century and 
extensively used during the half century before Gutenberg’s in- 
vention. The other two, alphabetic type and the printing press, 
are distinctly European additions to the art of printing, to which 
the East can lay no claim. 


Cu. XXII] IN CHINA 167 


Authorities seem to agree that Pi Shéng’s clay type and the 
type of tin that followed were never extensively used.** How far 
wooden type were used is unknown. Books printed with wooden 
type can seldom be distinguished from those printed with blocks. 
There is one book of the Sung Dynasty in which a Chinese char- 
acter appears lying on its side instead of upright, and this, ever 
since the end of the eighteenth century when the defect was first 
pointed out by a Chinese writer, has been regarded as evidence 
that the book was printed with movable type.?® A more critical 
examination than has yet been made of the books of the Sung and 
Yiian Dynasties for misprints or other indications might shed some 
light on the extent to which movable type were used in this early 
period. It seems probable that the use of wooden type in some 
form or other was more widespread than that of Wang Chéng’s 
revolving -tables.*° 

Most important evidence corroborating Wang Chéng’s descrip- 
tion is the font of wooden type found by M. Pelliot on the floor of 
one of the caves of Tun-huang. These are without doubt the 
earliest movable type in existence. From the deposit in which they 
were found and other factors, M. Pelliot has given the date as 
approximately 1300. There are several hundred type, most of 
them in perfect condition. They were made of hard wood, cut out 
with a fine saw, of exactly the same height and depth, and they 
meet perfectly the requirements of Wang Chéng’s contemporary 
description. 

There is just one marked difference, however, between Wang 
Chéng’s type and those found by Professor Pelliot.*1 While the 
former were Chinese, those found at Tun-huang are in the Uigur 
script. By the time these type were produced, movable type print- 
ing had so spread and had become so at home in Central Asia that 
a font of type had been produced in the Uigur script, the whole 
genius of which is entirely different from Chinese. As Uigur writ- 
ing is alphabetic, being based ultimately on Aramaic, it would 
seem natural that the Uigurs, when they began to use movable 
type, would immediately see the advantage of having these type 


168 MOVABLE TYPE [Pr. IV 


represent single letters, a system so infinitely less cumbersome 
than that in use in China. Perhaps they did, but if so, we have no 
record of the fact, and no examples of alphabetic type have been 
found. The discovery at Tun-huang consists entirely of word- 
type, in slavish imitation of the Chinese system. The alphabetic 
structure of the script merely changed the square Chinese type of 
Wang Chéng’s description into type whose length varied according 
to the length of the word. 

The significance of this discovery at Tun-huang lies in the con- 
firmation it gives of the contemporary records, and in the evidence 
afforded that already in Mongol times printing with type had 
spread westward into Central Asia. The remarkable spread of 
type-printing eastward and its improvement in the hands of the 
Koreans will be shown in the next chapter. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


THE GREAT EXPANSION OF MOVABLE TYPE 
PRINTING IN KOREA 


OREA came under the domination of the Mongol Empire 
kK before the death of Jinghis Khan, but retained through- 
out the Mongol period a certain amount of autonomy, 
the kings of the native Koryu Dynasty merely receiving their ap- 
pointment from the Great Khan and acknowledging his suze- 
rainty. After the imperial court had become thoroughly Chinese 
under Kublai and his successors, it became the custom of the 
Korean kings to spend a large part of their time at Cambaluc 
(Peking). Korea had always been accustomed to draw her cul- 
tural stimulus from China, but during the Mongol period this cul- 
tural connection became peculiarly close. In 1314 a library of 
10,800 books was brought to Korea from Nanking, to which the 
Mongol emperor added some 4,070 volumes. The relationship 
that was established at this time brought Korea close also to the 
countries of Central Asia, and it is generally believed that the 
large number of Sanskrit and Tibetan books that are still found 
in the monasteries of Korea date from the Mongol period. 

The last years of the Mongol Dynasty and the first years after 
its overthrow were a time of misgovernment and anarchy in 
Korea. The last degenerate kings of the Koryu line spent their 
time in pleasure and license at the court of Cambaluc, and, after 
the Mongol Dynasty had been overthrown, in stupid vacillation 
between allegiance to the defeated Mongols and allegiance to the 
victorious Mings, while meanwhile the country was altogether a 
prey to Japanese pirates. In 1392, Korea’s great hero, General 
Yi, put an end to this condition by deposing the last weak Koryu 
king and taking the throne, thus ushering in a line of energetic 
rulers, who for a century gave Korea the best government the 


L7GLs MOVABLE TYPE [Pr. IV 


country has ever known. This century of good government, under 
kings who were not only strong rulers but were patrons of litera- 
ture as well, was the time when Korea led the world in printing 
and developed to a high degree the use of metal type. 

The first mention of a type foundry is in 1392, the very year the 
new dynasty was started. The Korean annals for this date contain 
the statement: “A department of books was established, which 
had as its responsibility the casting of type ' and the printing of 
books.” ? 

Whether the practice of casting type went back further than 
this is uncertain. There is evidence that has led some to believe 
that metal type were in use in Korea during the period 1232-1241,° 
and in the British Museum there is a book printed with type in 
Korea that on two title pages bears the dates 1317 and 1324.4 But 
the authority for the thirteenth century date is not convincing, 
and the British Museum book may easily be a reprint containing 
the dates of the two original block-printed works. The earliest 
certain date for Korean typography is the starting of the “De- 
partment of Books” in 1392,° and Korean writers of the next 
century regarded the year 1403, the time when this department 
actually began work, as marking a new era in the history of print- 
ing. 

While in the Far East, as later in Europe, the beginnings of 
block printing had been so gradual and unheralded as to be almost 
untraceable, the beginning of the official use of metal type for the 
printing of books was immediately hailed as a great invention. 
Both the Korean annals and the prefaces * of the books printed 
abound in ascriptions of praise to the kings who have enhanced 
the glory of their reigns by fostering this great invention. 

The new department apparently did little till the year 1403. 
Two years before this the founder of the dynasty had died, and the 
energetic crown prince, to whose skill the successful establishment 
of the dynasty had been largely due, had come to the throne under 
the name of T’ai Tsung. T’ai Tsung, a reformer who by his energy 
and ability brought about radical changes in Korean life, is by 





EARLY KOREAN METAL TYPES 


Of uncertain date, preserving the form of the type of the early fifteenth century 
(Actual size) 


American Museum of Natural History. 





Cu. XXII] IN KOREA 171 


many regarded asKorea’s greatest king. The notice in the Korean 
annals of the beginning of official typography is as follows: “‘In 
the third year of T’ai Tsung (1403), the king thought with sad- 
ness of the fact that so few books could be printed. He founded 
therefore an establishment for the making of type and had books 
printed with them. The carrying on of the work was put in the 
hands of certain officers [here follow the names], and the metal 
for the purpose was furnished by the government.”’’ 

A fuller account of this same event * appears in the preface of a 
book * which, according to a statement on its title page, was 
printed with movable type in 1409 and a copy of which is still 
preserved: “In the second moon of the first year of Yung-/o 
(1403),!° the king said to his attendants, ‘Whoever is desirous of 
governing must have a wide acquaintance with the laws and the 
Classics. Then he will be able to act righteously without and to 
maintain an upright character within, and thus to bring peace and 
order to the land. Our eastern country lies beyond the seas, and 
the number of books reaching us from China is small. The books 
printed from blocks are often imperfect, and moreover it is difh- 
cult to print in their entirety all the books that exist. I ordain 
therefore that characters be formed of bronze and that everything 
without exception upon which I can lay my hands be printed, in 
order to pass on the tradition of what these works contain. That 
will be a blessing to us to all eternity. However, the costs shall 
not be taken from the people in taxes. I and my family, and those 
ministers who so wish will privately bear the expense.’"! Then 
was money in great abundance given from the private treasury 
of the king, and officials appointed [list of names] to superintend 
the undertaking and to carry it out. The Book of Poetry, the 
Book of History and the Commentary of Tso were given from 
the royal palace to furnish models for the type. The casting began 
on the nineteenth day of the same month, and within a few 
months several hundred thousand type had been cast... . 
These type were cast in order that all books might be printed. 
May they extend to a myriad volumes in number and be handed 


te MOVABLE TYPE’ Era, 


down through a myriad of generations. Thus vast was the design, 
so deep and far-reaching the thought that inspired it.” This 
preface is dated in the eleventh month of the same year (1. e. 
between December 14, 1403, and January 12, 1404) and appears in 
exactly the same form in books printed in 1409, 1434 and 1437. 

That this event was regarded by Korean writers as on the one 
hand connected with the Chinese invention of movable type, and 
on the other as marking a new era in the history of printing, is 
indicated by the following statement written in Korea toward the 
close of the century. ‘‘The movable type method was begun by 
Shén Kua" and brought to perfection by Yang Wet-chung. 
All old and new books in the world could be printed with these 
type, so that their use was very great. But the type were usually 
made of burnt earthenware, were easily broken and were not 
durable. After some hundreds of years there had been great 
progress in intelligence, and then type were made of bronze in 
order to preserve them forever. I am confident that the beginning 
of this was under our dynasty. Kung Ting Wang (another name 
of T’ai Tsung, the dates of whose reign are 1401 to 1419) was the 
first to make them. Chuang Hsien Wang (1419-1451) and Hui 
Chuang Wang (1456-1469) carried on the work. Then the per- 
fection of movable type could go no further. . . . From the 
time of Chi-tzti (the reputed founder of the Korean kingdom, 
about B.c. 1100) Korea has been a literary nation, but, being 
separated from China, there has been a lack of great books. For- 
tunately through the inventive wisdom of the sages of our dynasty, 
who have discovered the art of casting type to print books, all 
Classics, histories, books of philosophy and literary collections are 
in every home.” #4 

Improvements—and with them new fonts of type—followed 
one another in rapid succession, eleven royal decrees relative to 
the casting of new fonts being recorded from 1403 to 1544. The 
best. writers in the land were employed to write characters as 
models for the typemakers, and the autographs of ancient Chinese 
calligraphers were also used. The enthusiasm went so far that, 


Cu. XXIII] IN KOREA 173 


when there was lack of bronze, the bells of ruined monasteries 
and vases and instruments belonging to individuals and to vari- 
ous government departments were melted up. 

The second font was cast in 1420," and a record of its founding 
is preserved in the second preface !” (dated 1422), of a book printed 
in 1437: 18 “The invention of cast type for printing all kinds of 
books for transmission to posterity is truly of infinite advantage. 
But at first the type thus cast did not attain to the highest degree 
of perfection, and printers lamented that the work was difficult to 
perform. In the eleventh month of the eighteenth year of Yung-/o 
(1420), His Highness of his own motion ordered his officer Li 
Tsang, a vice-president of the Board of Works, to cast a fresh set 
of type to be very fine and small, and he commanded the following 
officers [titles and names] to superintend and carry out the under- 
taking. The work was completed within the space of seven 
months. The printers found these type more convenient, and 
were able with them to print at the rate of twenty sheets a day. 
Our late king, Hung Ting Wang (1401-1419), had already done 
the same thing, and now His Highness, our present sovereign, has 
extended his work. It would be impossible to add to the perfection 
of the workmanship. Thus there will be no book left unprinted, 
and no man who does not learn. Literature and religion will make 
daily progress, and the cause of morality must gain enormously. 
The T’ang and Han rulers, who considered the first duty of the 
sovereign to be finance and war, are not to be mentioned in the 
same day with the sovereign to whom this work is due. It is 
certainly an eternal and boundless piece of fortune for this Korea 
of ours.” !9 

The fine print was found to be unsatisfactory, and in 1434 a 
new font with larger type was ordered cast. “In the seventh 
month of the ninth year of Hstian Tsung (1434),” the record runs, 
“His Highness said to Li Tsang, ‘The books printed with type, 
cast under your superintendence, are certainly very beautiful and 
admirable, but it is to be regretted that the characters are diffi- 
cult to read, owing to their small size. It would be a fine thing to 


174 MOVABLE TYPE A UNS BraLV 


cast a fresh font from written characters of a larger size.’ So he 
ordered: him to superintend the undertaking. A commencement 
was made on the 12th day of that month (August 16th) and in 
two months’ time over two hundred thousand type had been cast. 
On the ninth day of the ninth month (October 11th) the printing 
was begun, and it was found possible to print more than forty 
sheets a day. The clearness and exactness of the type made the 
labor twice as easy as under the old conditions. . . . After two 
successive reforms the type cast had attained the greatest possible 
degree of beauty and are indeed a treasure for this Korea of ours 
for all time to come.’’2° These three fonts were cast before the 
invention of printing in Europe—in 1403, 1420, and 1434. They 
were followed by new fonts in 1455 and 1465 and finally by a very 
magnificent printing outfit in 1484. It is evident that a large 
number of books was printed from each font. Sir Ernest Satow in 
1882, in two libraries in Japan, found thirty-seven books still pre- 
served, dating from 1409 to the end of the century, the oldest of 
which bear the dates 1409, 1434, and 1437. A large number more 
are now to be seen in the monasteries and libraries of Korea and 
Japan. 

Like the Uigurs, the Koreans came so close to the use of alpha- 
betic type that it seems strange that they should have stopped at 
the threshold of this further advance. From the earliest times Chi- 
nese had been the literary language of Korea. The Koreans had 
also worked out a method of expressing their own language more 
or less clumsily in Chinese characters. But during the Mongol 
period Koreans came closely in contact with the alphabet-using 
peoples of Central Asia—peoples whose languages were more 
akin in structure to their own. Large numbers of Sanskrit and 
Tibetan books found their way into Korean monasteries, and the 
study of foreign languages became a matter of interest. The 
result was that during the reign of the great literary king, Chuang 
Hsien Wang (1419-1450), who followed T’ai Tsung, a Korean al- 
phabet was evolved—a very perfect phonetic alphabet based 
largely on Sanskrit. Just one book of early date in movable type 


Cu. XXIII] IN KOREA 75 


in the new alphabet is extant.2! It is dated 1434. But it is printed 
in even more complicated form than that used by the Uigurs. It is 
in parallel columns, Korean and Chinese, the Korean showing the 
pronunciation of the Chinese characters. Each Chinese character 
with its corresponding Korean phonetic symbols forms a type. 
Again, as in the case of the Uigurs, printing was done with movable 
type in an alphabetic language, but again the idea of type repre- 
senting single letters was, so far as known, not thought of. 

Most of the books produced in Korea from metal type are royal 
editions. The title pages are in large characters, and prefaces in 
facsimile of the handwriting of the author are printed from blocks. 
Very frequently the title page mentions the fact that movable type 
were used. The style of the characters is that of Sung writing— 
a style that continued to be used down to the last century—so 
that early and late books are almost impossible to distinguish 
unless there is a date on the title page. During the early period 
Korean typography was confined to classical literature and books 
of history and morals.” Buddhist books in movable type are al- 
most non-existent. 

De Vinne, in his book on the invention of printing in Europe, 
writes, “The inventor of printing did not invent paper and did 
not originate engraving on wood. He was not the first to print 
upon paper, he was not the first to make printed books, it is not 
certain that he made the first press, it is not probable that he was 
the first to think of or make movable type. What he did was to 
invent the type mould—the first therefore to do practical and useful 
work.” *? The type mould then was the key to the invention of 
typographic printing. And it was the ¢ype mould that the Koreans 
developed. That is the significance of Korean printing. But it 
was a very different type mould from that of Europe. The Euro- 
pean mould makes type so uniform that they naturally lock to- 
gether and keep their alignment. The Korean type required me- 
chanical contrivances, either a plate of wax or bamboo strips, and 
probably also a metal rod fitted into grooves of the type, to hold 
them in place. Song Hyon,” writing between 1495 and 1507, thus 


a 


176 MOVABLE TYPE [Prey 


described the Korean process: “(Characters were cut first from 
beech wood, these were the models. Then sand was taken from 
the shore of the sea where the reeds grow. This was placed in a 
trough and the wooden letters pressed against it.% In this way the 
negative moulds were made, from which the type were cast. Over 
these was placed a cover with openings, and melted bronze poured 
in. When this cooled, it became type. Where irregularities oc- 
curred such as sharp corners, they were worked over afterwards 
with a file. The single type were held in columns by bamboo 
strips, so that they could not get out of line. At first it was not 
known how the type could be placed one against another and 
held firm, and for that purpose a wax plate was arranged for fixing 
the type. This, however, was not sufficiently firm, and so the 
practice began of fitting the type into a bamboo frame.” 

In the Government Museum at Seoul are preserved a large 
number of ancient type which are believed by the Japanese mu- 
seum authorities to belong to the early fifteenth century. In fact 
they have been classified as belonging respectively to the fonts of 
1403, 1416, 1420, 1434 and later fonts. There are also in Leipsic 
and in the American Museum of Natural History ** in New York 
Korean type which purport to be of the early fifteenth century. 
The data are not as yet sufficient to test the accuracy of these 
ascriptions. On the other hand it is probable that the style of type 
did not greatly change, and that an examination of the type now 
existing is useful in order to ascertain what the early Korean type 
were like. The type in New York are made of bronze and are 
quite rough in their workmanship. They are about one centi- 
meter square, and the height to paper is only a little over half a 
centimeter. From the filing off of the jet, it can be seen just how 
the type were cast—the molten metal was poured in at the side 
of the type. Each type is grooved on the under side, evidently so 
that they could be laid along a metal bar to give the alignment. 
The edges, however, are so irregular that they never could have 
properly locked together. They must have been set in some soft 
material such as wax and made even with a planer. Judging from 


Cu. XXII] IN KOREA 177 


the gradual slope where the space between the lines of the char- 
acters is cut away (in marked contrast to the direct deep cutting 
of our steel punches) it is quite evident that the models were made 
of wood. A certain roughness of the type indicates that the 
moulds from which the type were cast were of sand. 

From Korea the use of metal type spread first back to China 
and later to Japan—but not so far as is known until after the in- 
vention of typography in Europe. The first book known to have 
been printed by the Japanese with movable type appeared in 
1596,?7 just after the Japanese conquest of Korea, and from that 
date for the next thirty-three years there was a constant succes- 
sion of books produced both with metal and with wooden type. 
Hundreds of different books were printed under imperial patron- 
age, some of them very fine editions, among others an encyclo- 
pedia in two hundred and twenty-one volumes. Suddenly in 1629 
all this activity stopped, and from that time till the coming in of 
European influence during the last half century, all Japanese 
printing was done with blocks. 

In China printing with metal type began earlier than in Japan 
and continued through the eighteenth century. There was a 
printer by the name of Hua Sui *8 in the city of Wusih 2° who used 
bronze type some time about the end of the fifteenth century,?° 
and there was printing carried on in Nanking at about the same 
time with type of both bronze and lead.*! Throughout the Ming 
Dynasty there was a considerable amount of printing from type, 
among the books thus printed being the works of Mé Ti between 
1§22 and 1567 * and the T’ai-p’ing-yii-lan encyclopedia in 1572. 
In 1590 the earliest typography under European influence is re- 
corded.** In 1662 a very perfect font of metal type was made under 
imperial direction, from which the T’u-shu-chi-ch’ eng, an ency- 
clopedia in six thousand volumes, was printed, as well as other 
works. The introduction to one of these works describes the pro- 
cess then in use for type-founding, which is similar to the process 
that had been in use earlier in Korea. Models were engraved in 
hard fine-grained wood, with them moulds were made in a sort of 


178 MOVABLE TYPE hPa Vs 


porcelain paste baked in an oven, and from these moulds finally 
the type were cast. In 1736 there was a shortage of currency in 
the empire (and also, it would appear, in the pockets of certain 
officials) and this font was melted up for the minting of cash. It 
was replaced in 1773 by a font of wooden type with which a new 
imperial literary collection * was printed.® 

In Korea itself the type-printing activity of the fifteenth cen- 
tury continued till 1544. Then it ceased entirely for more than 
two centuries. In 1770 a font of new type was made, and a few 
years later still another, with thirty-two thousand wooden models 
and three hundred thousand type. A large number of works were 
printed between 1770 and 1797 and a few continued to be pro- 
duced through the larger part of the nineteenth century. 

In all three of the Far Eastern countries printing from metal 
type required large capital and was carried on almost entirely by 
the government, ceasing when government support was with- 
drawn. On account of the non-alphabetic structure of the script, 
block printing was found more practical for private and commer- 
cial purposes. By the nineteenth century the use of type had al- 
most ceased in all three countries, and was reintroduced from the 
West as an entirely new art. Even to-day the use of type repre- 
senting single letters or phonetic symbols has made little progress. 
In Japan, which has a syllabary of fifty symbols, similar in use to 
an alphabet, word type are still almost universally used, the 
Chinese character and its phonetic equivalent in Japanese 
phonetic (kana) appearing on the same piece of type. A modern 
Japanese newspaper requires a font of some twenty thousand dif- 
ferent type.*? For this reason, except for large presses in impor- 
tant centers of population, block printing has still retained its 
hold, especially in China, and, where it is giving way, it is being 
replaced in the smaller printing offices not by type, but by a new 
cheap form of lithography. 

To sum up the progress of printing with movable type in the 
Far East. It began in China with Pi Shéng’s invention of earthen- 
ware type in the eleventh century. It made considerable advance 


Cu. XXIII] IN KOREA 179 


with the development of wooden type during the Mongol period. 
It reached its highest point in Korea in the fifteenth century with 
the extensive use of cast metal type that began in the year 1403. 
The Korean system spread to China and Japan, and was the 
method in those lands, as it had been in Korea, by which strong 
monarchs sought to further literature and education. But it has 
never been a commercial success and by the nineteenth century 
had been almost altogether displaced by the older block printing 
which in its turn is now giving way in the larger centers to Euro- 
pean typography. It is a strange fact that the nations the sym- 
bols of whose languages present more difficulties to the typo- 
graphic printer than those of any other languages in the world, 
should have been the first nations to invent and develop the art 


of typography. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


THE PEDIGREE OF GUTENBERG’S INVENTION 


tenberg’s birth, a commemorative volume was published 

by German scholars, which contained a monograph on 
the geneology of the inventor’s family. That is the pedigree of 
Gutenberg the man. It is possible now, in recapitulating the story 
of printing in China, to draw attention for a moment to certain 
persons who may be regarded as in a sense the ancestors, not of 
Gutenberg the man, but of Gutenberg the inventor of printing. 

If this pedigree is confined to that branch of the ancestry of the 
printer’s art which bears evidence of leading back to China, the 
purpose of such emphasis is not to minimize the European line of 
descent—it is merely in order to leave the European line, which is 
beyond the scope of this volume, to those who have specialized in 
that direction. The bookbinders with their metal stamps, the 
engravers from metal plates, the block printers, the textile print- 
ers—that long line of ancestry leading back finally to the brick 
makers and seal cutters of Babylon and Egypt—all are of supreme 
importance for an understanding of the background of European 
printing.? But it is the other side of the family, so to speak, with 
which it is our purpose to deal here, a side that has hitherto been 
neglected. 

First in that line stands an imposing figure, Ts’ai Lun the 
eunuch, inventor of paper (A.D. 105). Ts’ai Lun and Gutenberg, 
spiritual father and spiritual son. Of all the world’s inventors 
these two, the inventor of paper and the originator of European 
typography, stand out preéminent as those who have advanced 
the cause of literature and education in the world. 

Next in line stand certain men of unknown name and unknown 
date: the man who first rubbed his seal in ink and stamped it 


(): the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of Gu- 


Cu. XXIV] ©GUTENBERG’S INVENTION 181 


on paper instead of on wax or clay; the Taoist makers of good luck, 
who enlarged their wooden seals, smeared them with red cinnobar 
and made with them potent charms; the long line of Buddhist 
priests and monks who sought by every conceivable device, in- 
cluding stamps of metal and wood, to multiply representations of 
the sacred Buddha. 

The line now goes to Japan and includes the first imperial 
patroness of printing, the Empress Shotoku, the superstitious old 
lady who to prolong her life printed a million charms (A.D. 770). 

Following her, and back in China once more, is Wang Chieh, the 
first known printer of books, who to honor his parents printed the 
long roll of the Diamond Sutra (a.p. 868). 

Parallel to the Taoist and Buddhist lines were those Confucian 
scholars, who, more interested in the exact text of the Classics 
then in charms and sutras, started to cut that Classic text in 
stone, and from it to make rubbings or squeezes, which later came 
to be bound in books. 

The various lines converge in the next great name, which to 
most Chinese writers is the greatest since Ts’ai Lun, Féng Tao, 
the prime minister who held the empire together through the 
. troublous reigns of seven emperors and four dynasties, and who 
showed his greatness by having printed during that period of 
anarchy the text of the Confucian Classics—a work that did for 
Chinese printing almost what Gutenberg’s Bible later did for 
that of Europe (A.D. 953). 

Following Féng Tao the line again diverges. On the one side 
were the great block printers, who for the next four hundred years 
printed everything that was worth preserving and printed it well, 
making block printing a vehicle for thought and education such 
as it has not been in any other part of the world. 

On the other side were the experimentors with movable type, 
whose place in this ancestral table is perhaps more collateral than 
direct. The first of these, Pi Shéng the smith (between 1051 and 
1059) made his type of baked clay. His device was ingenious, but 
after his death it was never greatly used. The second was Wang 


182 MOVABLE TYPE [Pracy 


Chéng, who has left us a detailed record (1314) of the method used 
in his day for printing with wooden type, a record confirmed by 
type that have been found at Tun-huang. Following Pi Shéng 
with his type of clay and Wang Chéng with his type of wood, 
were the Korean kings of the half century before Gutenberg who 
printed at 'royal expense a goodly number of books from type 
of bronze—type that now for the first time were cast from 
moulds. 

Such is the pedigree of the invention of printing on the Chinese 
side. It must not be supposed that all the persons mentioned are 
necessarily in the direct line of ancestry of the European inventor. 
The last three in particular, the inventors and perfectors of type, 
would seem perhaps to be a collateral branch, as it were—cousins 
rather than ancestors of the inventor of European typography. 

This question of direct connection between the type of earthen- 
ware, wood and bronze of the Far East and the invention of print- 
ing in Europe is a difficult one, but the evidence so far is negative. 
Pi Shéng’s type were never greatly used and had been almost for- 
gotten before close intercourse with Europe under the Mongols 
began. Wooden type were in use at the time European intercourse 
was at its height, but the hundred years that elapsed after the 
closing of the trade routes and before the invention in Europe are 
difficult to bridge over. The Korean type were far more largely 
used than their clay and wooden prototypes had been, and it 
seems a strange coincidence, if, entirely without connection, the 
Koreans began printing with metal type just half a century before 
Gutenberg’s invention. Yet there is no evidence of such connec- 
tion. And intercourse between Europe and the Far East during 
that half century was, so far as we now know, almost non-existent. 
To state categorically that there was no direct connection between 
the typography of China and Korea and that of Europe would be 
premature. On the other hand no clear evidence of such connection 
has been found,’ and until such evidence—or the contrary—is at 
hand, it is necessary to keep an open mind. 

If China’s influence on European printing was probably not 











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From woodcuts by Jost Amman, 1568 


en, 


Schreib und Buchwes 


LRT 


wetitet alte : quatoctigh furtit ate eft 
mati. Artie qu dite colecat fue ho- 
mia furtit fie antmal-fire ager nowt 
wetice nec redinnt poteric quicquid fe- 
mel fuerit cofecrat. Sandu fancori 
tit Dig. Et ois colrecatio f offett ab 
tomate nd redimnecur=fed mozte mor 
eur. Numies orcime tee fine & ports 
arborum fine te fees Diu fire: + ill 
fantificant. Bi ge atit voluctit redt- 
meee tecimas frag: adit quiram par- 
rot fay of DeamaL, Hours ct ours 
rt rapre fq ub pattoris uinga cealeiie: 
quicquid Decrait mere Fandificalié 
Dio. MAG eligerur nec Loui nec mali: 
wrec alter comutabie. Bi qs mutaue- 
ritss qu mutatl &-4p quo muueati eft 
fadtificabié Diio-s no redimmet. Lec fuit 
pitepta G madautt dite moyt ad fili- 


dcin monte fai. Genter Wher 
atoneyreraner ott ih rut, 1 


=) Heutulys eft Domi- 





Filidy ait ioftph de tabu ephraim: 
tifama il? ammind . He ribu ma 
nallexgamalibel flr phapaflur. De 
trib bemamin ; abidan flies gede 
onis. He tibu Ran:abiezee fl? amt 
faddal. De tribu alec:piegie filius o 
thran. De tribu gad: cialaph filins 
duel. Me reibu neptalincahira hl? e 
nan. bn pringy mintudi- 
nis p mbus et mgnationes firas-et 
rapita eperatus ifrahel:quos culecic 
mories 4 Aaron cum ott vulg mul- 
Hitudinecec congegaucit prima die 
mettle {edi reeenfentes ron p cogmati- 
Dneger Dogs at familiag-ce capita 
tt uominafingulos a vicelime ano 
ct fupracftout precepreat tomin? moy- 
fi. Mumecarigy ine in ofeeta Hrrai te 
ruben primogenica iftabhetis pre gene 
rationes tt familias ac tomas fras- 
tt nomina capirum finguloy-omne 
ni frus ? matculint a wicca ang 





= y@bus ad moter im et fupra procedentium ad bellii:qua- 
1¢ i /] :Beleeco Frnati taber- Dragiuta [ee muilia quinged. De fis 
(A O narto foes: pia Trneont pee genetaciones et familias 
NG) vy Hs bie ie pe a DoMIsy nit oe Sia 
Cand alter egrecttig- unt pec nomina et capita finguioci- 
Saute tort te egipeo Dies. Lollite fimn- pine quod feeus eft mafeulini a wire- 
mam untuede congegationis filios fing ang et fupra-promdentium ad 
ifratel p rognationes 3 tomos fras- bellum :quinquaginta nour mulia 
rt nomina fingudoe-quirquid feeus reece. He flys gad p qerecaiones 
Emaftulini a wireline ano ce fupra- + familias acdomos coguanonum 
nim viror: foot ee iftabjetss numeca- Trai - recenfin fine pee nomtina {1 
bitis cas p rurmas fies tu tt aaron. Qulori a vignnti annie et fupra oies 
fru vobifum prncipes mbit qui ad bella procedernt:foraginta 
artomon f egnartonibs fuie:quoy quit milia feecei quingiginta. De 
ifta hunt noma. De eeibu rubarcely- Alijs inte p qeurationes 3 fanntias- 
fur filius fedeur. De cabu Hrueu-fa- ardomos cognariont fiay p noni 
lamifel filins firifabba De tribu iu- na fingulorim a viele ang et fi 
Da:naalon ile anminadab, Oe pra-Onies qui poterant ad bella pra- 
tribu ifachar: nathanael flius fuer. redete renite fits frpruaginta fn 
De rib zabulgn:eliab fins helon. oe milia freemntl. He bilije ifarhar pee 


PAGE FROM GUTENBERG $ 42-LINE LATIN BIBLE 


Cu. XXIV] GUTENBERG’S INVENTION 183 


through China’s typography, it will be well to recapitulate some 
of the points at which this Chinese influence is likely to have made 
itself effective. 

1. Through paper. Here we are on clear historic ground. Paper 
was an invention fully perfected in China, transmitted through 
the Islamic world. It served as the foundation for the invention 
of printing. 

2. Through playing cards. Playing cards were introduced into 
Europe from China, either directly or indirectly, during the latter 
part of the fourteenth century. Block printing, and with it the 
production of playing cards by printing, had begun by about the 
end of that same century, if not earlier. That among the first 
objects printed in Europe were these bits of cardboard whose use 
is known to have been at that time recently introduced from 
China is at least suggestive. 

3. Through image prints. The earliest European block prints 
that have come down to us are religious pictures, which, while 
European in design, yet in subject matter and purpose, in ink and 
in technique, suggest the prints of Central Asia. 

4. Through the great number of books printed in China. Men 
who returned from China to Europe, especially ecclesiastics, can- 
not have failed to spread reports of the great diffusion of books in 
that country, which far exceeded that in Europe. Such reports, 
coming to Europe at a time of intellectual awakening, must have 
been an incentive to invention. Even if the reports were vague 
and conveyed only hazy information as to method, this dimly 
seen background of achievement in another land must have added 
to that favorable atmosphere in which the art of printing was 
bound sooner or later to be discovered. There may here be seen a 
direct but ill-defined connection between Chinese d/ock printing 
and European typography, two processes which, however different 
in technique, were similar up to a certain point in cultural result. 

5. To these may be added the possibility, though not the proba- 
bility, that the actual method of typography in use in the Far 
East had in some way been reported in Europe. 


184 MOVABLE TYPE [Pr. IV 


Thus we see that no categorical answer to the question whether 
or how printing came from China can be given. The best that 
can be said is: that the introduction of paper from China is cer- 
tain; that the influence of Chinese block printing on European 
printing rests on such strong circumstantial evidence as to be 
accepted with a reasonable degree of certainty; that little or no 
reliable evidence has yet been found to show that the typography 
of China or Korea influenced that of Europe. 

More significant than the evidence for or against the influence 
of China on European printing and also more certain, is the evi- 
dence which this inquiry affords of the parallelism of the human 
mind in East and West. Here there can be no controversy. Those 
who write of Eastern inscrutability, who believe that the Chinese 
are a mysterious people with mental processes altogether different 
from our own, will here find food for thought. In China as in 
Europe the use of finely engraved seals began before the Christian 
era. In China as in Europe the desire for ornamentation led early 
to printing on textiles. At both ends of the world the religious 
impulse, reinforced in the monasteries, led to the beginnings of 
block printing, and in both cases the play impulse as represented 
by playing cards had also its part. In both China and Europe, 
when civilization reached the point where printing on a larger 
scale was needed, printing came, making the diffusion of books 
and of education general. That it came earlier in China than in 
Europe is due to the fact that China recovered more quickly from 
the Dark Ages and developed earlier a civilization that was ready 
for the diffusion of books. Finally both China and Europe 
evolved elaborate and ingenious schemes for the use of movable 
type. That block printing finally prevailed in China, while 
typography prevailed in Europe is due to the difference between 
Chinese and European script. Given similar conditions, the two 
ends of the world have done similar things. Intercourse there un- 
doubtedly has been—at certain points we have been able to trace 
it. But the great outstanding fact that has been shown by this 
inquiry is the parallelism in the working of the human mind on 


Cu. XXIV] GUTENBERG’S INVENTION 185 


the two sides of the world, a parallelism that has been manifest at 
every stage in the history of printing. 

Of all the world’s great inventions, that of printing is the most 
cosmopolitan and international. China invented paper and first 
experimented with block printing and movable type. Japan pro- 
duced the earliest block prints that are now extant. Korea first 
printed with type of metal, cast from a mould. India furnished 
the language and the religion of the earliest block prints. People 
of Turkish race were among the most important agents in carrying 
block printing across Asia, and the earliest extant type are ina 
Turkish tongue. Persia and Egypt are the two lands of the Near 
East where block printing is known to have been done before it 
began in Europe. The Arabs were the agents who prepared the 
way by carrying the making of paper from China to Europe. 
Paper making actually entered Europe through Spain, though 
imported paper had already come in through the Greek Empire at 
Constantinople. France and Italy were the first countries in 
Christendom to manufacture paper. As for block printing and its 
advent into Europe, Russia’s claim to have been the channel 
rests on the oldest authority, though Italy’s claim is equally 
strong. Germany, Italy and the Netherlands were the earliest 
centers of the block printing art. Holland and France, as well as 
Germany, claim first to have experimented with typography. 
Germany perfected the invention, and from Germany it spread 
to all the world. Great Britain and the United States, the two 
countries that to-day do the bulk of the world’s printing, are the 
two great nations of the world that lay no claim to having had a 
part in the invention, at least in its early stages, and have con- 
tented themselves with such later developments as the power 
press and the linotype. 







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NOTES 
INTRODUCTION 


1. For full quotation from Jovius, see chapter 16, note 9. 

2. Meerman’s authority is “The Historia Sinensis of Abdalla, written 
in Persic in 1317, which speaks of it [printing] as an art in very com- 
mon use.” The reference is probably to Banakati, whose work is 
quoted from that of Rashid-eddin. See chapter 17, note 19. For this 
and other early European statements about Chinese printing, see 
Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America, Worcester, 
Massachusetts, 1810, page 72. 

3. See Bibliography. 

4. A very brief but accurate notice of the invention of printing in 
China is contained in ‘a book entitled China by J. F. Davis (J. F. 
Davis, China, London, 1857, vol. 2, pp. 173-174). I believe the same 
passage occurs in an earlier edition of the work published in 1836. 

s. Asakura Kameso, Yeh Té-hui and Liu An. See Bibliography. 

6. The magnitude of the work has made it impossible to carry every 
quotation from Chinese encyclopedia or other source book back to 
its ultimate source, as in the interest of scientific accuracy the writer 
would have preferred to do. In key passages, however, on which the 
framework of the history depends, every effort has been made thus to 
get back to the original statement and to compare variant editions. 
In other cases, where use has been made of secondary sources, and in 
the very few cases where the translations of other European scholars 
have been accepted, the secondary source as well as the original has 
been noted. It should be observed that the Chinese encyclopedias 
and other source books used consist almost wholly of verbatim quota- 
tions from earlier works rather than paraphrases or summaries, and 
that, while the possibility of copyists’ errors is not thus altogether 
excluded, this method greatly diminishes the likelihood of such error. 

TiAl belOp (BY (In). Liu-shu-ku (ON = 3 HX), concluding par- 
agraph. Translation from L. C. Hopkins, The Six Scripts, Amoy, 
1881, pp. 60-61. The quotation from Confucius is from the Analects, 
book 14, chapter 9. 


190 NOTES 
CHAPTER I 
THE INVENTION OF PAPER 


1. For descriptions of paper napkins and toilet paper in China, written 
by Arab travellers in the ninth century, see for paper napkins, M. 
Reinaud, Relation des voyages faits par les Arabes et les Persans dans 
DP Inde et dans la Chine, Paris, 1845, pp. 24 and 38; and for toilet paper, 
Eusebius Renaudot, Anciennes relations des Indes et de la Chine de 
deux voyageurs Mohametans, Paris, 1718, page 17. 

2. Wall paper also is a comparatively recent contribution of China 
to European culture, having been introduced directly from China 
about the middle of the sixteenth century by Spanish and Dutch 
traders. See Grande Encyclopédie, art. Papier. For india paper and 
papier maché see Encyclopedia Britannica, art. Paper. 

3. There is a tradition that grew up in the T’ang Dynasty and is still 
held by certain writers, both Chinese and Western, that during the 
Chou Dynasty writing was done as a rule by cutting in the bamboo 
or wood with a knife. Chavannes (see Bibliography) discusses in 
full this theory and the reasons why it cannot be held. 

4. Silk was used as a writing material in Mesopotamia in the early 
Mohammedan period before the Arabs there started to use papyrus 
rolls. For this purpose white silk was dipped in gum and polished 
with a shell. See Grohmann, Corpus Papyrorum Raineri III., Series 
Arabica I. 1, Allgemeine Einfihrung in die Arabischen Papyrt, 
Vienna, 1924, page $9 and footnote 2. Grohmann suggests the 
likelihood that this use of silk was derived from India, which seems 
quite possible; but as the silk both of India and of Mesopotamia was 
imported from China, it would seem likely that the art of preparing 
silk for a writing material both in India and in Mesopotamia went 
back originally to a Chinese origin. 

While in China the use of silk as material for writing quickly gave 
way to paper, silk remained the usual material for painting for 
several centuries and has never been entirely displaced. 

[b (4k) This character is now the ordinary word for paper. The defini- 
tion of the word in the Shuo-wén, finished about the time of Ts’ai 
Lun’s invention, would indicate that to that writer it meant a form 
of paper or near-paper made of silk. The passage under consideration 


oe) 


~ 


CHAPTER I 191 


would seem to indicate that the word had also been applied to the 
pieces of silk fabric used for writing. This word has the silk radical 
as indication of material. Later the same word with the cloth radical 
substituted for that of silk is frequently used CR), but it is the 
form with the silk radical that has survived and is in common use 
to-day. 


. Hou-Han-shu ( mea #), book 180, section 68, subsection en- 


titled BE fy AB. 


. For continuation of the biography of Ts’ai Lun, see translation in 


Blanchet, Essai sur [histoire du papier, pp. 13-14. 


. For fuller description of this paper see chapter 11. 
g. The place where writing on wood continued longest was Miran, a 


Tibetan fort, which appears to have been particularly backward. 
Writing on wood continued at Miran—parallel with the use of paper— 
down to the eighth or ninth century. Serindia, pp. 348, 462. In most 
places in Turkestan it ended several centuries earlier. 


CHAPTER II 
THE USE OF SEALS 


. FJ, defined in the Tz’i-yiian Encyclopedia as “everything that 


has fine marks to be impressed on something else.” 


. The laundryman’s check goes back also in its origin to the ch’ou 


( #8), or met (FL), an ancient form of counter. But the fitting 
together of torn edges goes back to the practice here described. 


. The system of passports in use in Han times seems to be a continua- 


tion of this custom, and to give a possible hint also of another form 
of proto-printing. They are thus described in the Tz’i-yiian Ency- 
clopedia (section Zk, p. 5): “‘Fu-chieh were of bamboo, one foot two 
inches in length. Iron was used to imprint characters on them. On 
them was noted the age, surname, given name and facial description 
of the owner. . . . If on examination the two halves fitted, the 
owner was allowed to proceed. The Chou-li states, ‘to go through 


“BoD J 


the gates (i. e. over the border) it is necessary to have a fu-chich’. 


. The date at which the use of seals began has been warmly debated 


by Chinese antiquarians. The weight of evidence would seem to 


192 NOTES 


indicate that the use of private seals began somewhat before the end 
of the Chou Dynasty and that the first state seal was that of Ts’in 
Shih Huang. Kan Hsi (quoted in Yin-tien, 6:1) carried the use of 
seals back to pre-Chou times. But this is an extreme view, not sup- 
ported by others. The oldest authority on the subject is Wei Hung, 
(485) who lived in the first century, a.p. (Giles, Biog. Dic.,No. 2277). 
His statements are, “Before the Ts’in Dynasty, seals one inch square 
were made of gold and silver. When Ts’in Shih Huang received the 
jade from Ho of Chin, he made a seal of jade. . . . It was called 
the seal of inheritance of the Empire.” (Quoted in T2’#-y dan, section 
fe, p. 8.) “Before the Ts’in Dynasty everyone who wished used 
metal and jade for seals.” (Quoted in Ko-chih-ching-y tian, 41:1.) 
Wu-ch’iu Yen and Ma Tuan-lin, both of the Yiian Dynasty, deny that 
seals were used in the Chou Dynasty. Their statements can be 
reconciled with those of Wei Hung, if the former are regarded as 
referring to official seals, and if Wei Hung’s statements are interpreted 
as meaning that the use of private seals began just slightly before the 
beginning of the Ts’in Dynasty. The statements of Wu-ch’iu Yen and 
Ma Tuan-lin are as follows: 

“Tn the time of the Three Dynasties (2205-255 8.c.) there were no 
seals. Scholars should carefully note this. Although the Chou-li 
speaks of an object called hsi-chieh ( Bet fi); and mentions an official 
as having charge of examining and authenticating this object, and al- 
though in the commentary it is stated that the Asi-chieh was a seal, 
actually it was rather a scepter held in the hand. On the right side 
were cut characters, as in the seal of Ts’in Shih Huang, but it was not 
possible to make an impression, with it. If anyone had tried to make 
an impression, it would have been found that the impression was re- 
versed. The ancients used this object for authentication. They were 
not interested in having the characters reversed. They were so simple 
in their ways. What the ‘six seals’ of Su Ts’in in the Chan-kuo period 
were is uncertain. Huai-nan-tzti says that Confucius called Tzt-kung 
and gave him the seal of a great general. But this is not to be taken 
literally.” Hsiieh-ku-pien, ( Be ny a ) by Wu-ch’iu Yen = iia 
RT), quoted in T’u-shu-chi-ch éng, 144:2. 

“Before the (end of the) Three Dynasties, there were no seals. 
When the emperor gave orders, he took a piece of jade or of bamboo 


CHAPTER II 193 


and broke it, giving half to the minister or general to whom the order 
was given. This served as a special proof of the genuineness of the 
order. Also when a man was granted a title of nobility, such a half 
piece of jade was given him as proof, it being required that his half fit 
exactly with the half in the emperor’s possession. When times became 
more complex, it became necessary to guard against falsification and 
seals were the result.” From Wén-hsien-t’'ung-k’ao ( av kek iff S ) 
by Ma Tuan-lin a: Na Re), quoted in T’u-shu-chi-ch’éng, 144:1. 

The Shuo-wén (a dictionary compiled about a.p. 100) defines a seal 
(FI) ) as “an article for authentication ( fi) held by an official (3, 
att va Tuan Yii-ts’ai, in his commentary on the Shuo-wén, gives the 
following hint as to the origin of seals and as to how their use became 
more extended during the Han Dynasty, “The ancients wrote on 
bamboo slips and wooden boards. Whenever they wished to send 
any information to a distance, the slips or boards were wrapped in a 
piece of silk and impressed with seal clay ( ft We): When silk be- 
came the ordinary writing material, the use of seals (FI) ) became 


widespread.” te 3 fie ee at (Commentary on the Shuo-wén) 
by FY * 3X (Tuan Yii-ts’ai), folio 9, El at. 

From an examination of the conflicting evidence, it would seem that 
the use of private seals probably began slightly before the beginning 
of the Ts’in Dynasty (255 3.c.), and that the first imperial seal was 
the famous jade seal of Ts’in Shih Huang. 

5. These documents were found at Niya. The writing is in the Kharoshti 
script. The site where they were found was abandoned toward the 
close of the third century, a.p. See Serindia, pp. 224-231. 

6. A possible hint of the use of something analogous to seal impressions 
in India not long after Alexander’s conquest is contained in Hsiian 
Tsang’s narrative of an impression of a tooth in “purple clay” (red 
wax?) by Kumala, the faithful son of Asoka. See Si-yii-chi ( pq tal 
aU) folio 3, page 10 (Nanking edition). 

7. Many seal impressions of the Han Dynasty have been found in north 
China, and a collection of them has been published under the title 
Féng-ni-t’u-k’ ao ($f We F ) or Record of Clay Seal Impressions. 

8. Yin-tien, chiian 6, pp. 1-4. 

g. The use of seal impressions in wax or some similar substance, rather 


194 NOTES 


than inked impressions, has been almost universal in the Roman 
Empire and in Europe. There have, however, been exceptions, and seal 
impressions made by what we may call the Chinese method were made 
even in classical times. There is in Berlin a red ink stamp on papyrus 
that dates from a.p. 85, and is quite similar to the seal impressions 
that began at a later date in China. It was found in Egypt. (Berlin, 
Altes Museum, Papyrus Ausstellung, No. P 6867). The use of red ink 
stamps in Egypt never altogether died out, as is witnessed by a stamp 
on linen in the Erzherzog Rainer collection in Vienna, dating from 
between 1250 and 1257. However the use of such seals in Europe and 
the Near East was very rare, and played no such part as in China in 
the ushering in of block printing. 

10. The fact that Han seals were impressed in clay and not with ink is 
attested not only by finds in Turkestan and north China, but by docu- . 
mentary evidence. The authorities quoted below (note 11) as to the 
beginning of inked impressions all imply that earlier impressions were 
of a different sort. A quotation in Yin-tien records the fact that the 
“clay of Lan-ch’ing (Lan-ch’ing-chih-ni) was brought from the country 
of Fu-i, and was used during Wu-ti’s reign (B.c. 140-86) for the sealing 
of state documents.” The poetic expression for imperial edict used by 
Li Po and others, “purple clay document,” retains in the language a 
memory of a former practice, the use of “purple clay” by the emperor 
being perhaps a step in the transition to the cinnobar or red ink of later 
times. It is only fair to state that certain Chinese scholars seem to 
ignore the fact that seals were ever different from those of their own 
day. A book entitled, “History of Seals” (Afi $f), written prob- 
ably in the Yiian Dynasty, which purports to give facsimiles of the 
seals of all great men from Ts’in Shih Huang down, gives them all in 
red and all in approximately the same form. The Ch’i-hsiu-lei-k’ ao 
of the Ming Dynasty (a book not altogether noted for its accuracy) 
even describes circumstantially the red seal impressions of the Han 
Dynasty. (Quoted in Ko-chih-ching-yiian, 41:1). Those who take the 
opposite view are historians of greater reputation for accuracy and 
their statements are confirmed by the finds in Turkestan and north 
China. 

11. “The seals of the Six Dynasties (A.D. 220-589) were changed accord- 
ing to the style of the times. Gradually they began to use seals with 
red characters (on white ground) and white characters (on red ground). 


CHAPTER II 195 


The change in the style of character began at this time. . . . The 
seals of the T’ang Dynasty followed those of the Six Dynasties and the 
characters were made in red.” Yin-tien, chiian 6, pp. 1-2. This is the 
final conclusion of the author of Yin-tien (see Bibliography) based upon 
a multitude of earlier authorities that are quoted. Yin-tien is a very 
carefully written critical history of seals. Among the authorities 
quoted is Kan Hsii, who writes, “No red impressions from Han times 
have been found. When we come to the Six Dynasties and the times 
of T’ang and Sung, those red impressions were valued”; and again, 
“ Among ancient seal impressions there were some that were partly red 
and partly white. These are all from after the Han Dynasty.” It is 
evident that the author of Yin-tien believes, on the basis of his various 
authorities, that the change came during the latter part of the period 
of the Six Dynasties rather than the earlier part, and I have therefore 
set as a tentative date the fifth and sixth centuries. 

So far as Turkestan finds are concerned, the transition might have 
taken place at any time between the beginning of the fourth century 
and the end of the seventh. In general Han seals are in clay, T’ang 
seals in ink. No accurately dated seals of the transition time have been 
found. In this case, while the evidence of archeology and of tradition 
coincide, the latter narrows the date down more exactly than does the 
former. 

12, These documents are in the Tibetan language and were found at 
Miran, which seems to have been a back eddy, far behind other parts 
of Turkestan in beginning to use paper. Both the documents on wood 
and those on paper seem to date from the eighth or ninth century, long 
after wooden stationery and clay seal impressions had disappeared 
from other communities. See Serindia, pp. 348 and 462. 

13. Ko Hung, Pao-p’o-tzii, chap. 4. Translation from De Groot, 
Religious System of China, vol. 6, p. 1049. 

14. There are a number of passages indicating that the Taoist charm 
seals were made of wood. Among them are the following, one referring 
to the Han Dynasty, the other to early T’ang: 

“In the month of midsummer, they placed at the gates and doors 
seals of peach wood, six inches in length and three in breadth, inscribed 
in colors with the words, ‘Let the law be obeyed’.”” History of the Han 
Dynasty (Hou-Han-shu), 15:1. Translation from De Groot, vol. 6, 


p. 1049. 


196 NOTES 


“The Taoist priests cut seals out of the heart of date wood. They 
are four inches square.” Hsi Chien, in the T’ang Dynasty encyclo- 
pedia entitled Ch’u-hsiieh-chi, quoted in Ko-chih-ching-ytan, 41:1. 

15. Ko Hung, writing in the fourth century, insisted on wooden charms 
being worn as amulets by people travelling in mountainous country, 
stating that “they should preferably be written with red cinnobar on 
planks of peach wood.” De Groot in quoting this adds, “At least from 
Ko Hung’s time, man has painted or written charms with the carnation 
color of cinnobar or tan, this substance having always been used by 
emperors or their proxies to mark their decisions as authentic.” De 
Groot, vol. 6, pp. 1047-1048. (The section quoted from Ko Hung is 
from Pao-p’o-tzii, section 17). The fact that the Taoist charm always 
used whatever form would best indicate authority makes it virtually 
certain that, when red ink seal impressions came into use, the Taoist 
charm seals followed suit. The very idea of connecting the seal with 
the charm was to indicate authority. “A charm without a seal is like 
an army without a commander,” is a favorite Taoist saying (De Groot 
6:1048). There is clear evidence that in the early days when characters 
written on a broken bamboo slip constituted the evidence of authenti- 
cation, the Taoist charm was such a broken slip of bamboo. (See 
De Groot’s account of the various meanings of the character $f, 
vol. 6, p. 1034). When seals came in with their clay impressions, the 
Taoist charm was a clay seal impression. When red ink of cinnobar 
became the vogue for authenticating imperial documents, Taoist 
charms—at least the written ones—had red ink. And finally when this 
red ink of cinnobar came to be used for the impressing of seals, there is 
every reason to suppose that the big wooden seals of the Taoists— 
those seals of date wood four inches square described by Hsti Chien— 
were impressed on paper with red ink of cinnobar. When actual proof 
of this can be found, either from Chinese records or from under 
Turkestan sands, it will be possible to state with confidence that the 
world’s first block printers were the Taoist charm makers of China. 
Liu Pin’s statement (see chapter 8) of the books that he saw for sale 
in Szechuen in 883 adds weight to this view. 

16. See chapter 7. 

17. See chapter Ig. 

18. Another early form of authentication by means of inked impression 
was the finger print. This method of identification, which has recently 


CHAPTER II 197 


come into use in the West, was in use in China probably from the T’ang 
Dynasty and was clearly described by an Arabic writer, Rashid-eddin, 
during the Mongol period. For Rashid’s description and for biblio- 
graphy on the subject, see Henry Yule, Cathay and the Way Thither, 
Cordier edition, vol. 3, pp. 123-124. 


CHAPTER III 
RUBBINGS FROM STONE INSCRIPTIONS — 


1. The word used is mu-hsie (zs i ). The regular word for rubbing 
Pa ($A), did not come into use until the T’ang Dynasty. The view 
is sometimes held that the word us as used in the Han Dynasty was 
the equivalent of i> but it is by no means certain. 

. Hou-Han-shu ( % Fe #5), section go (F ) , page 8, biography of 
Ts’ar Yung. 

3. There are a number of objections to this traditional view according 
to which the making of rubbings began in the second century. Per- 
haps the most important of these objections is the question what kind 
of ink could have been used. It seems more probable that the prac- 
tice began not so very long before the date of the earliest rubbings 
found—perhaps in the sixth century. 

4. This rubbing bears the date 653/4 as the time when a certain person 
saw it, and the text is a poetical work composed and written by the 
emperor T’ai Tsung (627-649). The copy for the inscription is written 
by the celebrated writer and calligrapher, Liu Kung-ch’uan. See 
Pelliot, Une bibliothéque mediéval retrouvée au Kan Sou, Bulletin de 
l’Ecole Francaise d’Extréme Orient, vol. 8, p. 527. 

5. According to the official history of the T’ang Dynasty ( af #7 
‘4 i ) these officials were known as ?’a-shu-shou (A at #F-). 


6. Portions of another book of rubbings, cut and mounted in leaves, 
were found at Tun-huang. It consists of rubbings from the Hua-tu- 


ssii-pet (AY, BE = Te), of which the original was written by Ou- 
yang Hsiin ( fax ne =i) ) in the beginning of the T’ang Dynasty. 
See Serindia, page 918, also plate CLXIX, ch. 1080. Some of the 
leaves of this book are in the Stein collection in London and some in 
the Pelliot collection in Paris. 

7. Literary evidence of lithograph books from stone blocks prepared 


wv 


198 NOTES 


co 


specially for the purpose goes back only to the tenth century. The 
clearest record is that of 993, quoted in note 9. There is however 
probable earlier reference by Cho Po-hsiu, quoted by the thirteenth 
century writer Chou Mi Fal oF ) in the book entitled Ydn-yen- 


kuo-yen-lu (2 KN shy ng $k): “The last emperor of the Later 
T’ang Dynasty (934-936) ordered Hsti Hstian to have cut in stone 


such original manuscripts and old and new rubbings as existed from 
the earlier dynasties. So we must put the beginning of the making of 
rubbings earlier than the Shun-hua period.” Ko-chih-ching-y tian 
(FS Eat $y Ia), book 39, folio 6. Julien (Journal Asiatique, 1847, 
page 510) and Pauthier (Mémoires de la Société des Etudes Japo- 
naises, 1887, vol. 6, page 186) apparently find literary evidence of 
lithograph books (which they say were cut on the stone in reverse) 
in the year go4, but they do not quote their authority for the state- 
ment. The only evidence of lithograph books in the ninth century is 
the actual discovery of these books at Tun-huang. 


. Ts éfu-yiian-kuet (Ht RE 3c af), written about 1005 (quoted in 


Journal of Sinological Research, Jan., 1923, page 139). See chapter 
g, notes 7 and 8. 


_ These volumes (there are ten of them) are known as fa ?’teh. Ou-yang 


Hsiu (1007-1072) thus describes the production of the fa Pieh of 992, 
“Tn the troubled times at the end of the T’ang Dynasty, the imperial 
graves were broken into by robbers, and the books and pictures that 
had been kept in them were torn from their rolls. Gold and jewels 
were taken and the books thrown away. Thus the autographs of 
great men of Tsin and Wei times came into the market. In the time 
of T’ai Tsung (976-998) these were bought up and put into ten books 
in order that they should be reproduced and passed on to posterity. 
These volumes were presented to the high ministers of state, and are 
the fa ?’ieh now in possession of various nobles and ministers.” Accord- 
ing to Ts’ao Chao, in the work entitled Ko-ku-yao-lun, these fa-t’ieh 
were published both in block print and in lithograph: “T’ai Tsung 
of the Sung dynasty searched out the autographs of men of former 
times and in the period Shun-hua (990-995) ordered the secretary 
Wang Chu to print them in nine books. These were cut in blocks of 
date wood, and placed in the private cabinet of the emperor.— 
In the third year of Shun-hua (992) an edict was issued to cut them 


CHAPTER III 199 


in stone, and by use of Chéng-hsin-ang paper and Li-ting-kuei ink 
to make rubbings. They were made in such a way that the hands 
were not soiled by the ink. Those that have no marks of repair by 
silver nails are the earliest and the best.” (These quotations are 
taken from the Ko-chih-ching-yiian Encyclopedia, section 39, folio 6, 


(74 th). 


10. That the use of the lithograph for preserving calligraphy had begun 


I 


i 


_ 


at an earlier date than this is indicated by the Tun-huang booklet 
described in note 6. 


1. The Ko-chih-ching-yiian Encyclopedia devotes ten pages to a de- 


scription of the lithographic texts produced in the Sung Dynasty and 
three to counterfeits of these Sung lithographs (see Bibliography). 
According to Julien, the Chih-pu-tsu-chai-ts'ung-shu ( Ey AN UE ying 
We } ) describes “all the ancient inscriptions and all the autographs 
of famous men that were printed by this method between the years 
1143 and 1243.” 


CHAPTER IV 


THE DYNAMIC FORCE THAT CREATED THE DEMAND 
FOR PRINTING—THE ADVANCE OF BUDDHISM 


. It seems quite possible, as already pointed out, that this Buddhist 


activity was preceded by a practice among Taoist charm makers 
that was very closely akin to block printing. After the period of 
more or less primitive Buddhist printing, the next great step forward 
was the printing of the Confucian Classics by Féng Tao in 952, 
which marked a new stage in the art. Each of China’s three re- 
ligions seems, therefore, to have had its part, but the greatest part, 
at least during the early centuries, was that of Buddhism. 


CHAPTER V 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BLOCK PRINTING IN CHINA, 
THE INK, AND THE METHOD USED 


. At least fifteen books in English, French and German have appeared 


in recent years—many of them handsome de /uxe editions—on the 


200 NOTES 


vie 


3: 


Chinese and Japanese wood cut (especially the color print) regarded 
as a fine art—a rather startling fact when it is remembered that the 
whole bibliography in European languages on the Chinese invention 
of printing consists of three magazine articles and one short pamphlet. 

T. L. De Vinne, The Invention of Printing, New York, 1876, pages 
39-41. 

What this ch’i was is uncertain. The character (¥3) pictures drops 
of water falling from a tree, and means to-day the varnish made from 
the sap of the lacquer tree. With this varnish a pigment made from 
iron sulphate is often used, and it seems reasonable to suppose that 
some such material constituted China’s ancient ink. Such an ink 
would never have been satisfactory for block printing. 


. There was another form of ink—red ink—that had been known in 


China since the Han Dynasty and probably earlier, that might have 
been satisfactory for printing. This is made of red oxide of mercury 
or cinnobar, which is mined in the province of Kweichow. It is still 
used for taking impressions from seals, a practice that may have 
begun earlier than the invention of encre de Chine (see chapter 2). 
The difficulty of using cinnobar for printing is its rarity and consequent 
expense. 


. “In the most ancient times a bamboo twig was dipped in lacquer 


for writing. In mid-ancient times there was an ink stone (3 
from which ink could be produced by rubbing. In the time of the 
Tsin and Wei Dynasties, ink in blocks was first made. It was made 
from the smoke of lacquer and from lamp black produced by burning 
pine wood. So the people of the Tsin Dynasty commonly used a 
concave stone for rubbing the ink stick and collecting the dissolved 
ink.” Tung-t’ien-ch ing-lu ( YA] KiB $3 ) by Chao Si-ku (Sung 
Dynasty). 

“In ancient times there were two forms of ink, one from lamp 
black of pine and one from ‘ink stone.’ After the Tsin and Wei 
Dynasties we hear no more of ‘ink stone,’ as the making of ink from 
lamp black became general.”” Ch’ao-shih Ink Classic. Both the above 
translations are made from excerpts in the Ko-chih-ching-yuan 
Encyclopedia, book 37, folio 20. What ‘ink stone’ (3 Ay) was is 
uncertain. Its present meaning is bitumen. 

The name Wei Tang as the inventor of ink is given on the authority 


co 


PP WNP He 


CHAPTER V 201 


of.Liu Yu of the Yiian Dynasty quoted in the Tz’i-yiian Encyclo- 
pedia under the word a. 

This date for the invention of lamp black ink is not uncontested. 
Hsiin Hsiu, in his preface (written in the third century, A.D.) to the 
Bamboo Books, uses the word mo (33) of the ink with which those 
books were written. It seems probable however that, unless the word 
is an interpolation, it refers to the ink that other writers call ch’7. 


. Cf. John F. Davis, China, vol. 2, page 180; S. Julien and P. Cham- 


pion, Industries anciennes et modernes de Empire chinois, Paris, 
1869, pp. 129-140. 


. Black ink of lamp black and red ink of cinnobar were both used in 


Egypt from the dynastic period down through Greek, Roman and 
Byzantine times, as well as later. The usual ink for writing on papyrus 
was made much like the Chinese ink, and like Chinese ink was kept 
in a dry condition. 

There is a curious parallel between the use of cinnobar for imperial 
decrees in the early Byzantine empire and in China. The restriction 
of the use of cinnobar to the emperor began in Constantinople about 
A.D. 470. 


. This description is taken in the main from John F. Davis, China, 


London, 1857, vol. 2, pp. 176-177. I have preferred to make use 
of this early description, as the method here described is less likely 
to be influenced by changes brought from the West. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE BEGINNINGS OF BLOCK PRINTING IN THE 
BUDDHIST MONASTERIES OF CHINA 


. See chapters 8 and 14. 

. See chapter 3. 

. See Serindia, index, Stencil, also plates XCIV and CXIII. 

. See chapter 20. Also Serindia, index, Silk, printed, and plates CX XII, 
Ccce 

. This forms the base or frame on which one of the block prints in the 


British Museum is pasted. The pattern is of ellipses forming a net, 
printed in dark blue on a light blue ground. There are two fragments, 
each about six inches by two. 


202 NOTES 


6. The impressions on the rolls in the British Museum range from 1.5 
to 2.8 inches in height and from 1.2 to 1.8 inches in width. Those 
in Paris and Berlin are approximately the same. 

7. A wooden stamp found by Pelliot at Kutcha in E. Turkestan 
dates—according to the deposit in which it was found—from not later 
than 800. That the use of these stamps had spread as far west as 
Kutcha by 800, indicates a very early date for China itself. Metal 
stamps of uncertain date have been found at Turfan. 

8. See chapter 5 for description of the method of Chinese block 
printing. 

9. 4X 3.4 inches. Only the bare outline is printed. Details are filled in 
by hand in colors. The workmanship of this sheet of heads bears a 
striking resemblance to the most primitive European block prints. 

10. Size 13 x 20 inches. 

11. This rubbing dates from the reign of T’ai Tsung, 627-649. See 
chapter 3. 

12. Before 800. See note 7, above. 

13. Stanislas Julien in 1847 (Journal Asiatique, series 4, vol. 9, pages 
505-507) was the first to introduce to European readers the view that 
printing was carried on in China in the year 593, and from Julien the 
statement has found its way into the Encyclopedia Britannica and 
most histories of China in Western languages. The origin of this 
theory is interesting. Julien quotes it from the Ko-chih-ching-y ian 
Encyclopedia (RS yd $4 J), published in 1735. The statement in 
this encyclopedia is quoted from Lu Shén ( Be EE ) and from the 
book Pi-ts’ ung ( 3 ). Lu Shén lived from 1477 to 1544 (Giles, 
Biog. Dict., No. 1427). His statement, contained in his book Yen- 
Asien-lu (3H Fal Ex), is: “Under the emperor Wén Ti of the Sui 
Dynasty, in the year 593, the eighth day of the twelfth month, on 
orders from the emperor, all neglected Aszang (8, the word means 
either images or pictures) and scattered ching (£8, Classic texts or 
sutras) were carved and collected (FE HE ). This is the beginning 
of the printing of books. It was thus earlier than Féng Ying-wang 
(i.e. Féng Tao, 881-954). This reference of printing to Wén Ti’s 
reign is clear and explicit and indicates that the theory went back as 
far as the sixteenth century. The statement in the book Pi-ts’ung 


(full title of book Shao-shih-shan-fang-pi-ts ung, “YP Ze ih) Ss 


CHAPTER VI 203 


He, by Hu Yin-lin, tH HB ie, written near the end of the Ming 
Dynasty) is apparently based on that of Lu Shén. It reads simply: 
“Block printing had its birth at the beginning of the Sui Dynasty, it 
expanded greatly under the T’angs, took a leap forward under the 
Five Dynasties and finally came to its fullest development under the 
dynasty of Sung.” Against these two statements is the weight of the 
older Chinese tradition (the very form of Lu Shén’s statement shows 
that he is propounding something contrary to the generally received 
opinion), and also the explicit authority of at least three prominent 
writers of the Sung Dynasty, whose statements follow: 

“Under the T’ang Dynasty block printing, though carried on, was 
not fully developed. Under Féng Ying-wang (Féng Tao) first the 
Classics and then all the ancient canonical works were printed.” 
Shén Kua (Jt F§), 1030-1093, Méng-ch’i-pi-t’'an (HS YA Se ZB), 
book 18, section g (edition of 1631). 

“Before the T’ang Dynasty all books were manuscripts, the art of 
printing not being in existence.” “According to popular report the 
cutting of blocks and printing of books from them was commenced 
by Féng Tao. This is not the fact. . . . Printing certainly existed 
in the T’ang Dynasty, but I apprehend it was not equal in workman- 
ship to the present.” Yeh Méng-té (#E #8 #4), c. 1130, as quoted 
by Ma Tuan-lin CE Vita Re ), W én-hsien-t ung-k’ ao (3 pk ii 
SF), c. 1319. Tr. by Meadows in Miscellanies of the Philobiblon 
Society, vol. 6, pp. 15, 16. 

“There was no printing before the T’ang Dynasty. Inked blocks 
were first used at I-chou at the end of the T’ang Dynasty.” Chu Yu 


(Ae ), I-cho-liao-tza-chi (Fay = $e Ht. ac.) vol. 2, folio 61 
(edition of 1774). 

In the face of such conflicting evidence it is necessary to discover 
where Lu Shén got his information, which has so remarkably domi- 
nated European writings on the subject. There is apparently nothing 
about printing in the annals of the Sui Dynasty. In the Buddhist 
Tripitaka, however, in the volume entitled Li-tai-san-pao-cht, ( Fé 
{G = Pe 3c ) by Fei Ch’ang-fang (FR fe #) (Kyoto edition, 
a0 30, vol. 7, chap. 15, folio 666), stands the passage from which 
Lu Shén’s statement is a word for word (though abbreviated) quota- 
tion. This section of the book was written in the year 597, only four 


204 NOTES 


years after the event related. The last two sentences of Lu Shén’s 
statement (from “this was the beginning of the printing of books” to 
the end) is not quotation but is Lu Shén’s comment. A critical examin- 
ation of the whole passage, without this gloss and in connection with 
the context, leaves little doubt that printing is not referred to at all, the 
true interpretation being that damaged images were re-carved and 
that scattered sutras were collected. This interpretation of the pas- 
sage was first proposed by a Chinese writer in the book S hu-yin-ts ung- 


shuo (2 FB 3 FP) (“FE refers to images, HE to sutras, this 
is not the beginning of printing”), and accepted by the Japanese inves- 
tigator, Kameso (AR AX Hh ¥i) 2 B, p. 3). Arthur Waley 
of the British Museum recently came independently to the same con- 
clusion and published the arguments for it in the New China Review 
(see Bibliography). In his Introduction to the Study of Chinese Painting 
(page 87, footnote), Mr.Waley has correctly quoted me as saying that 
while Julien forced the meaning of the passage which he translated, his 
general inference with regard to date was perhaps correct. Since my 
conversation with Mr. Waley in 1922 on which this statement is based, 
further study has convinced me not only that Julien’s interpretation is 
forced, but that his date is in all probability too early and that a cen- 
tury or more later would be more correct. 

In Shu-lin-ch’ ing-hua ( 1K Ya Zn) by Yeh Té-hui ( HE 
{iid jee), vol. 1, folios 19-20, there is a full discussion of Lu Shén’s 
interpretation of Fei Ch’ang-fang’s statement, with quotations from 
Chinese and Japanese authorities. The author’s conclusion is that 
Lu Shén’s interpretation is incorrect and that there is no reference to 
printing. 

Terrien de Lacouperie (Beginnings of Writing in Central and Eastern 
Asia, pp. 66 and 190; Western Origin of Early Chinese Civilization, 
p- 345) has pointed out a number of still earlier passages which he has 
interpreted as references to printing. An examination of the passages 
concerned, however, shows that they refer not to printing but to the 
making of stone inscriptions. 

14. Certain of the later emperors of the T’ang Dynasty were completely 
under the influence of Taoist superstition, and to this was due the 
persecution of Buddhism that lasted from 845 to 859. In 859 Bud- 
dhism was restored to its former position. 


te 


oO wv 


at 


ae 


co ~] 


CHAPTER VII 205 


CHAPTER VII 


THE EMPRESS SHOTOKU OF JAPAN AND HER 
MILLION PRINTED CHARMS. . a.p. 770 


Chinese literature began to enter Japan as early as 540, but Chinese 
civilization did not begin to make a strong impression till the be- 
ginning of the seventh century. Four Japanese students were sent 
to China in 608 to study, and on their return were instrumental in 
bringing about the great reforms of 645. 

P. Y. Saeki, The Nestorian Monument, Tokyo, 1913, p. 145. 


. Nithongi, book 23, page 8. For this and other information about 


Japanese seals, see Hans Spoérry, Das Stempelwesen in Fapan, Zurich, 
1901, pages 7-9. This passage from the Nihongi dates from about 
720. 


. Commentary of Shoku-Nihongi-Kosho. 
. For full description of these printed textiles, together with bibliogra- 


phy of Japanese books on the subject, see Kameso, page 4. See also 
Toyei Shuko, J//ustrated Catalog of the Shoso-in Treasury at Nara, 
1908, English introduction and plates. 


Surigonomo (48 x). 


#4 A AK RB, published about 797. 


. See fad 5p K Be HfL, Tokyo, 1908, edition of 1916, page 1395, 


and last plate in supplement. 


. There is an earlier passage, dating from 751, which is claimed as a 


reference to block printing in Japan, but the interpretation is uncer- 
tain. The passage is as follows: “‘In the second year after the death of 
Otomo Akamaro (governor of the district of Tama in the province of 
Musashi, died 750) there was born a calf with black marks on its 
back. These marks had the appearance of an inscription on stone. 
They were interpreted to mean that Akamaro had appropriated to 
himself temple property and had died before punishment had over- 
taken him, and that as retribution he had been reborn in the form of 
this calf. At this all his family mourned deeply and feared, saying, 
“It is a fearful thing to commit sin. Can such a crime remain without 
punishment?” This event was announced in a kafagi and in the sixth 


month of the same year was published abroad #R (4 HE HE Ae, 


206 NOTES 


Ki > ah KX) in order that those who should read it should 
repent of their sins and do good.” (BAS BY JH eR ae FE mee SE 
Zt, middle section). A katagi ( He yi) in later writings means 
a block print. The fact that this event was only a few years before 
the first known block printing and that the statement here referred 
to was ‘published abroad’ by this means, has led certain Japanese 
writers to regard this katagi as a block print. The question is dis- 
cussed by Kameso, who gives the text in full. 

10. There is some confusion about the exact date of this event. The 
Empress Shotoku ruled for the second time from 765 to 769. The 
account in the Shoku Nihongi gives the fourth year of the period 
jee i 4 E (770) as the date when the printing of the charms 
was ordered. On the other hand the temple record (Ee IN ne 


$k ) gives the eighth year of the period K > vE re (764) as 
the year in which the pagodas, containing the charms, were made 
and distributed. To add to the confusion, the name of the ruler is 
here given as ze: BA, who reigned from 749 to 758. This same 
temple record gives 767 (first year of the period nu ie eS =, 
cyclical year J x) as the date when halls for the pagodas were 
built in the temple. For text of the Shoku Nihongi statement and the 
temple record, see Kameso, page 8. 

Satow gives the date 764 as the year when the work was begun and 
770 as the year when it was completed, and his reckoning may be 
taken as at least approximately correct. 


. HA AR ac 
12. WK SF BR Be 
13. 4 As: 

14. The romanization is Satow’s. 

15. Slight variations among the impressions of the same charm have 
led some to question the fact that the charms were actually printed 
from blocks at all. In answer to this, it has been correctly pointed out 
that such a large number of impressions would have required several 
blocks for each charm, as only about ten thousand impressions can 
be taken from a wooden block before it is worn down. 

16. The spreading of the ink in some of the impressions has been thought 
by some to indicate that the plates were of metal. On the other hand 


CHAPTER VII 207 


the variations between impressions of the same charm (see above) 
would indicate wood. The latter would be more in keeping with the 
general history of block printing, as far as it is known. 


17. $e UG RIG HK BE HB OVE &S. Japanese, Mu-ku Fo-ko Kyo. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE FIRST PRINTED BOOK 
THE DIAMOND SUTRA OF 868 


1. The earliest date on any document corresponds to the year A.D. 406. 
The latest dated document found by Stein belongs to the period ggo- 
994. The latest of those found by Pelliot is of the period 995-997. 

2. The Diamond Sutra. Printed by Wang Chieh. Found at Tun- 
huang by Stein. Now on exhibition in the British Museum. This is 
the oldest printed book known that is dated, or of which the date 
can be ascertained Some undated book from Turfan or elsewhere 
may conceivably be older, but it seems unlikely. 

3. This quotation is the sentence with which the printed text of the 
roll ends. The same sentence in abbreviated form appears, with the 
name of the sara, on a little paper tab written by hand and pasted 
on the outside of the roll—evidently for convenience in filing. 

4. Known in Sanskrit as Prajné Péramité, and in Chinese as a fia 
®. This sutra was a favorite one with Chinese Buddhists. The 
two most important translations into Chinese are by two of the most 
famous men in the history of Chinese Buddhism. The one is by the 
monk, Kumarajiva, who came to China as a missionary at the end of 
the fourth century from Kutcha in Chinese Turkestan, and the other 
by the Chinese pilgrim, Hstian Tsang, who went to India and returned 
in the seventh century. This printed edition of 868 is the translation 
of Kumarajiva. The oldest printed book from Japan is a portion of 
Hsiian Tsang’s translation. The most beautiful example of printing 
found at Turfan is a Sanskrit edition of this same sutra, printed dur- 
ing Mongol times (see chapter 17). The Diamond Sutra has twice 
been translated into English, the best translation being that of 
Gemmell. (The Diamond Sutra, by William Gemmell, London, 
IgI2.) 


208 NOTES 


5s. William Gemmell, The Diamond Sutra, London, 1912, pp. 45-46, 
61-62. 

6. These are: 1 a dictionary (fragments only) now at Paris (see end of 
this chapter); 2 a roll, similar in form to the Diamond Sutra, written 
by a Buddhist abbot, and containing twenty-four examples of filial 
piety in verse (on exhibition in British Museum); 3 a Buddhist 
work (a dharani charm now in Paris), which can be definitely ascribed 
to the period before the end of the T’ang Dynasty by the fact that the 
character does not appear, a blank being left in place of that 
character. 

5. “In the Three Dynasties (i. e. before B.c. 255) the writings made with 
lacquer on bamboo were heavy and difficult to read. From the time 
of the Ts’in and Han Dynasties, the use of paper and ink came to be 
generally known. The simplification of writing as compared with the 
earlier method was very great. However from the Han Dynasty 
through that of T’ang, rolls were in use. . . . Whenever one read a 
roll, or wished to look up anything, it was necessary to open-up the 
whole roll, which was very inconvenient. It was also necessary con- 
stantly to roll up the books and keep them in order, which entailed 
still more difficulty. At the time of the end of the T’ang Dynasty and 
the beginning of that of Sung, the making of manuscripts came to a 
sudden end and printing came in. At the same time rolls came to an 
end and books came in. They were easy to produce, difficult to 
destroy, cheap and convenient.” From Shao-shih-shan-fang-pi-ts ung 
(> SS ly Be SE BB) by Ho Yintin (48 BR HE), end of Ming 
Dynasty. Quoted in Ko-chih-ching-y uan Encyclopedia, book 39, folio 1. 

See also quotation to the same effect from Kuei Tien-lu in Ko-chih- 
ching-yiian, book 39, folio 4. Kuei Tien-lu ascribes the beginning of 
the paged book to Féng Tao, who was contemporary with this little 
booklet from Tun-huang. 

A passage in the History of the Sung Dynasty (5R Bp), however, 
dates the beginning of paged books from the Sung Dynasty. This may 
refer to stitched rather than folded books. The statement reads: 
“ Ancient books were in general in rolls. From Sung times come the 
first books that are bound and printed.” Sung-shu (Re =), quoted 
in BY ae section fg, page 108. 


8. Two other printed books, purporting to come from the T'ang Dy- 


CHAPTER VIII 209 


nasty, and found not at Tun-huang but elsewhere in China, are de- 
scribed by Liu An (pages 2-3). Of these the first is certainly a forgery 
and the second needs further substantiation. 

g. The dated documents are as follows: 


At Paris: 947. 


947. 


950. 


971. 


At London: 868. 
947: 


947. 
949. 
983. 


Single sheet with Buddhist pictures and text. Hand 
colored. 

Another similar sheet given as votive offering by the 
same man. (Many copies, one of which has been 
presented by M. Pelliot to the Morgan Library in 
New York.) 

A dharani charm, seven pages long, all printed at 
once from one block. 

A dharani charm, the text of which had been cor- 
rected by Chi Hsiang, a monk from India. 

The Diamond Sutra of Wang Chieh. 

A single sheet similar to those of the same date at 
Paris, but not colored. (Three duplicate copies.) 
A larger single sheet (1534x1014 in.) of the same sort. 
A small Buddhist sutra in folded book form. 

A large charm, mainly in a mystic form of Sanskrit 
that cannot be deciphered, but with also a few 
words of Chinese. 


The eight page folded book in London and the seven page dharant 
charm in Paris are naturally classed with the single sheets, as they have 
the same primitive character. 

10. The suggestion that the Diamond Sutra was imported from some- 
where further back in China proper, while the single sheets were of 
local manufacture, was made by Stein. 

11. There is another probable reference to printing in T’ang times, 
which, though obscure, may antedate that of Liu Pin. It is by Fan 
Shu Gu +a ) in the book Yiin-ch’i-yu-t’an (es YA F< BR also 
known as = ES K ait |, referred to by aE ia, vol. 2, section 
MK, p. 151, and quoted by Liu An, page 2. The passage is difficult 
of interpretation and no definite date can be assigned. Another 
obscure passage that may refer to printing and which may antedate 
Liu Pin, is noted in Shu-ling-ch’ ing-hua, vol. 1, folio 20. These obscure 
passages both refer to omens and charms. 


210 NOTES 


12. BM FL. Sztima Kuang’s History, in the records of the T’ang 
Dynasty, has the following account of Liu Pin’s life: “In 902 Liu Pin 
was made governor of Lu-chou. The Liu family from the time of 
Liu Kung-cho had been held in honor by scholars and officials for its 
adherence in every generation to filial, fraternal and social duties. 
_. . The eunuchs hated him, and hence he was long punished by 
being kept in provincial posts. He wrote a book of admonitions for 
the junior members of his family.” Translated by Meadows in 
Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society, vol. 6, page 16. 

13. Lit., Yin-yang (Ee 5). 

a. ef, the Nine Mansions, or arrangements of color connected 
with the eight trigrams. 

15. What “character books”’ ieee 4 ) were is uncertain. They may 
have been copy books for learning penmanship. Again they may have 
been dictionaries. The fact that leaves of a dictionary dating from 
about this time were found at Tun-huang by Pelliot lends weight to 
the latter interpretation. 

16. This statement is found in a book entitled Chia-hsiin-hsu (KE =)|| 
Fe) by Liu Pin Gl Ft). It is quoted in full in the Older History 
of the Five Dynasties (EE aie Bp ) in an editorial note in the 
edition of 173g, section (AE) 43, folio 1—a note in which many of 
the earliest sources on the history of printing are gathered together. 
It is also quoted in full in SAu-ling-ch’ ing-hua, vol. 1, section (4) I, 
folios 18-19. In abbreviated form it is quoted by Yeh Méng-té (BE 
es fi), otherwise known as Yeh Shih-lin (HE AA Kk); in a book 


entitled Yen-yii (ae 2B ), written about 1130, which in turn is 
quoted by Ma Tuan-lin ( ia Fi ) in the book Wén-hsien-t’ ung- 
k’ao ( ia jek if SF), c. 1319. Other abbreviated versions are found 
in the Ko-chih-ching-y tian (fa ay $i J ) Encyclopedia of 1735 
(book 39, folio 3) and in Liu An, page 2. European writers who have 
called attention to Liu Pin’s statement are T. T. Meadows (Miscel- 
lanies of the Philobiblon Society, vol. 6, page 16) and Arthur Waley 
(New China Review, I919). 


17. HS. 
18. From J-cho-liao-tza-chi (Fay it $8 Ret aL) by Chu Yu (Ae ), 


CHAPTER VIII QI 


edition of 1774, vol. 2, folio 61. The full statement reads, “There 
was no printing before the T’ang Dynasty. Inked blocks were 
first used at I-chou (Ch’éng-tu) at the end of the T’ang Dynasty. 
During the time of the dynasty known as Later T’ang the Nine 
Classics were for the first time printed. All copies of the classics and 
the histories that were in the hands of the people were gathered to- 
gether to determine the text for the cutting of the blocks.” 


19. 4% +p|, the modern Ch’éng-tu. 


20. BY Cars stu" 


ax. fly Be vy Sb FB. 


22. The Ch’ieh-yiin, the scattered leaves apparently belong to more 


than one edition of the dictionary. 


CHAPTER IX 


THE PRINTING OF THE CONFUCIAN CLASSICS 
UNDER FENG TAO 932-953 


1. The emperors of Shu during its first period of independence were 


Cy COr 


Wang Chien ( £ #£), 907-919, and Wang Yen (FE RF), 919-929. 
During the second period they were Méng Chih-hsiang (7 41 JRE), 
934, and Méng Ch’ang a xa), 934-965. During all this time 
Szechuen was prosperous, prosperity reaching its height during the 
reign of Méng Ch’ang. 


. See chapter 8, notes 13-17. 
. See chapter II. 


Hy WA Tar 


. Wang Ming-ch’ing (= HA Ya )> otherwise known as Wang 


Chung-yen (= fi Bs), i in the book Hui-chu-lu ( HE jE are 


Quoted in the Older History of the Five Dynasties (2 
3), edition of 1739, section (ae) 43, folio 1, editorial note. 


Ai-jih-chai-ts ung-ch’ao ( 4 ye 3S gh ). Quoted in Older 


History of the Five Dynasties, Mot of 1739, section 43, folio 1, 
editorial note. There is some confusion about the exact dates of Wu 
Chao-i’s work. It is clear from all sources that Féng Tao was largely 
influenced by the printing that he saw in Shu. According to Wang 


202 NOTES 


7. 


[oe) 


9. 


Ming-ch’ing’s account, it would seem that Wu Chao-i’s work was 
already in full swing when Féng Tao’s forces conquered Shu. On the 
other hand it is apparent that Wu did not actually become prime 
minister till Shu regained its independence in 934. It seems probable 
that his educational activities and his patronage of printing began 
before he was actually elevated to the premiership. However that 
may be, it is certain that there was considerable printing going on in 
Shu before 929 when Féng Tao’s conquest of the province took place. 

The four dynasties were the Later T’ang, the Later Tsin, the Later 
Han and the Later Chou. The seven emperors were Ming Tsung and 
Min Ti of the Later T’ang Dynasty; Kao Tsu and Ch’u Ti of the Later 
Tsin Dynasty; Kao Tsu and Ying Ti of the Later Han Dynasty; and 
T’ai Tsu of the Later Chou Dynasty. 


. The Classics were cut in stone during the T’ang Dynasty at Ch’ang-an 


(Si-an-fu) between 836 and 841, and are still in part preserved. Photo- 
graphs of them have been published by Chavannes. It is these 
Stone Classics that in general served as a model for the wooden plates 
made under Féng Tao’s direction, though there is evidence that 
certain distinctive features of the Stone Classics of Shu also found their 
way into Féng Tao’s text. The original contribution of the National 
Academy was to incorporate commentary with the text. The manu- 
scripts on which the Stone Classics of 836 to 841 were based contained 
both text and commentary. Of this only the text was copied on stone. 
Féng Tao again included the commentary. 

Of the printing of this period in the lower Yangtze Valley (Wu) 
nothing further is known. 


Io. Ts’ éfu-yiian-kuet (Ht Kt Jc 4), written about 1005 by Wang 


rae 


Hsin-jo ( ER #5 ) and Yang I (KB {iS ). 

. This account is abridged from the Ts’éfu-yiian-kuei (see above). 
This is the oldest and fullest account. For those who wish to compare 
different accounts of this event given by historians of the next three 
centuries, the following translations are appended: 

Official history of the Later T’ang Dynasty (2 {UG #. jie 
3); “In the third year of the period Ch’ang-hsing (932), in the 
second month, the official known as chung-shu made a memorial to the 
emperor, proposing to take as a model the characters of the stone 
inscriptions and to cut plates for the printing of the Nine Classics.” 


CHAPTER IX 213 


Official history of the Later Han Dynasty (48 fh {UG 32, 2 #, 
(= Wt 7): “In the first year of the period C#’ien-yu (948), 
in the fifth month, the National Academy sent a memorial to the 
emperor, stating that there were still four Classics—the Chou-/i, the 
I-li, the Kung-yang-chiian and the Ku-liang-chiian—of which no plates 
had been prepared; and requesting that scholars be called together to 
edit the text for the purpose of producing the plates. The petition 
was granted.” 


Official history of the Later Chou Dynasty ( #{t 2, 8 
3): “Tn the time of Ming Ts’ung of the T’ang (i. e. Later T’ang) 
Dynasty, because the Classics had in them many mistakes, Liny 0; 
the officer in charge of education, with T’ien Min and others, taking as 
models the Classics as cut in stone by Cheng Tan at the Western 
Capital, cut blocks for printing and thus spread the Classics abroad 
in the world. All who followed them had the work of these men as 
their foundation.” 

Official history of the Sung Dynasty, section entitled Fu-ling-chian, 
(FE SS, te 1K AR): “In the beginning of the T’ien-ch’eng period 
(926-930), T’ien Min, a doctor of the National Academy, directed 
Ma Kao to work with him in the revision of the Nine Classics. In the 
fourth year of the T’ien-fu period (939), Tien Min was given the title 
of chi chiu. Though T’ien Min’s scholarship in the Classics was based 
on solid ground, he loved forced interpretations of passages. In the 
Nine Classics which he edited, he frequently put forward his own 
subjective interpretation.” 

Ts é-fu-y tian-kuet (HH Kf 3c hi, for authors and date see note 
7): “Féng Tao, the prime minister of the Later T’ang Dynasty, 
and Li Yii, wished to do honor to the ancient classical learning. They 
said, ‘During the Han Dynasty Confucian scholars were honored and 
the Classics were cut in stone in three different scripts. In T’ang 
times also stone inscriptions containing the text of the Classics were 
made in the Imperial School. Our dynasty has too many other things 
to do and cannot undertake such a task as to have stone inscriptions 
erected. We have seen, however, men from Wu and Shu who sold 
books that were printed from blocks of wood. There were many 
different texts, but there were among them no orthodox Classics. If 
the Classics could be revised and thus cut and published, it would be 


214 NOTES 


a very great boon to the study of literature. We therefore make a 
memorial to the throne to this effect.’ The answer of the emperor 
was that T’ien Min and other scholars were to examine and revise the 
text of the Classics and of the Commentaries. The work was carried 
on with zeal, and included the Book of Poetry and the three commen- 
taries of the Ch’un-ch’iu. The text was corrected, and the blocks were 
cut with great exactness. Proofs were adduced with regard to the exact 
reading of the text, and the work was brought together in books. 
The Classics were first in this way made exact, and then they were cut 
in blocks. Money was appropriated from the Cheng-shth office, and 
also unappropriated money from various branches of the government 
was given out, as well as taxes from second degree graduates, in order 
to pay for the labor. There were bestowed upon T’ien Min a state 
robe, fine silks and silver plate. Also to the official, Chao Chu, there 
were given a state robe and fine silk. 

“Tn the fourth month of the year 932, the following order was given 
by the emperor, ‘For the purpose of revising the stone inscriptions 
of the Classics, uniting them with the Commentaries, and having them 
cut in plates for printing, it is ordered that from the National Academy 
specially qualified men be appointed, five or six for each one of the 
Classics, to examine the text and to add to it the Commentaries; also 
that there be appointed from the court officials five men to supervise 
the work. [Names of five officials including T’ien Min.] Since the 
establishment of the text of the Classics is of great importance, an 
importance not to be compared with that of all other books, although 
I have already ordered the National Academy to appoint officers to 
edit the work, yet, because the work is so vast, and I still fear that 
errors may creep in, I order Ma Kao and the men with him (who are 
all great scholars and each one a specialist in the Classics), to make a 
final exact examination, in order that everything may be brought to 
absolute perfection.” 

Shén Kua (7 $§), 1030-1093, in Méng-ch’i-pi-st’an, (Be 

BX), edition of 1631, book 18, section g: “Under the T’ang 
Dynasty block printing, though carried on, was not fully developed. 
From the time of Féng Ying-wang (Féng Tao), first the Five Classics, 
and then in general all the ancient canonical works were printed.” 

Ssti-ma Kuang’s History (finished about 1084): “In 932 orders 
were first issued to edit the Nine Sacred Books and print them for 


CHAPTER IX 215 


sale.” . . . “Formerly in the time of Ming Tsung of the T’ang 
(Later T’ang) Dynasty, the ministers Féng Tao and Li Yu prayed 
the emperor to command T’ien Min of the National College to correct 
the Nine Sacred Books, then to cut blocks for them and print them 
for sale, and the court assented. The present edition was printed and 
presented to His Majesty on the Ting-szi day of the month. From 
this time forth, even in periods of anarchy, the Nine Sacred Books 
were transcribed and diffused very widely.” (Meadow’s transla- 
tion.) 

Yeh Méng-té ( Be fi ), about 1130, quoted by Ma Tuan-lin 
about 1319: “‘Before the T’ang Dynasty all books were manuscripts, 
the art of printing not being in existence. . . . Inthe time of the Five 
Dynasties, Féng Tao first memorialized his sovereign, praying that 
an official printing establishment might be put in operation.”” (Mea- 
dow’s translation.) 

Chu Hsi’s History (finished about 1172): “In 932 the T’ang (Later 
T’ang) Dynasty for the first time cut blocks for the Nine Sacred Books 
and had them printed for sale.” (This quotation and the two preceding 
are from the translation of Thomas T. Meadows, in Miscellanies of 
the Philobiblon Society of London, vol. 6, pp. 1-33. There is some 
question about the rendering of the word here translated ‘for 
sale.’) 

Wang P’u ( £ Yi), 922-982, in Wu-tai-hui-yao (f(t & ): 
“In 932 the chung-shu official wrote a memorial recommending that, 
with the Stone Classics as a basis, the Nine Classics be printed from 
plates. It was ordered by the emperor that the National Academy 
bring together leading Confucian scholars with their assistants, and 
that they should take copies (rubbings?) of the Stone Classics from 
the Western Capital; and that, each according to the particular 
Classic that was his speciality, they should copy and annotate the text, 
and then read them through with the minutest care; that then work- 
men of ability in the printing of characters be employed; that each 
department, following the model prepared, should cut the plates, and 
that the books thus printed should be spread abroad in the world. 
If anyone should have a desire in the future to write a copy of the 
Classics, it should be forbidden to do so except in accordance with 
these printed copies; that it should not be allowed again to bring out 
miscellaneous editions. In the same year in the fourth month, the 


216 NOTES 


order was given by the emperor that the guest friend of the crown 
prince, Ma Kao, [and other officers, including T’ien Min] be appointed 
to have oversight of the work.” 

Yii-hat (G5 143: ) by Wang Ying-lin (+E ies jee), 1223-1296: “In 
932 in the second month, the emperor ordered the National Academy 
to revise the text of the Nine Classics, and, using the books (rubbings?) 
of the stone inscriptions from the Western Capital, to have them 
copied and cut on wooden plates, in order to have them spread 
abroad through all the empire. In the fourth month, Ma Kao, Ch’en 
Kuan, and T’ien Min were ordered to examine the work with the 
greatest care. In the sixth month of 953, the plates of the eleven 
Classics, together with the Er-ya, the Wu-ching-wén-tzu and the 
Chiu-ching-tzi-yang, were finished, and T’ien Min presented them to 
the emperor.” 

Except where otherwise specified, the above translations are from 
the text contained in the Journal of Sinological Studies for Jan., 1923. 
(See Bibliography.) 

12. By piecing together the various accounts it would seem that the 
Nine Classics were: Yi-ching, Shu-ching, Shih-ching, I-li, Chou-li, 
Li-chi, and the three commentaries of the Ch’un-ch’iu. At the same 
time there were printed the following: Hsiao-ching, Lun-yii, Er-ya, 
Wu-ching-wén-tat (Fy, & BC =F) and Chiu-ching-tzii-yang (AL 
rhe a) 


—f- tx): 


The names of these two last, which were commentaries written 
during the T’ang Dynasty on the “Five Classics” and the “Nine 
Classics” respectively, may account for the fact that while most 
authorities speak of Féng Tao as having printed the “Nine Classics,” 
Shén Kua speaks of his work as the printing of the “Five Classics.” 
Both “Five Classics” and “Nine Classics” were conventional terms 
used at different times to refer to the Confucian canon. (Compare 
our use of the words “Pentateuch”’ and “‘Hexateuch.”) 

13. This is the account in the Wu-tai-hui-yao ( h. {ft # Liye The 
Ts é-fu-ytian-kuei (see above) gives additional details, including an 
account of the charge of embezzlement that was brought against T’ien 
Min in connection with his management of this printing project, and 
how it was hushed up. 

Two years after the publication of the Classics (955), another book 


CHAPTER IX 217 


was entrusted to T’ien Min for printing. It was the Ching-tien-shé-wén. 
Chang Chao, minister of war, was associated in the work. 

14. The question of the exact date of Wu Chao-i’s printing of the Classics 
and how this printing relates to that of Féng Tao at the national 
capital is as difficult as is that of the beginning of Wu’s career. K’ung 
P’ing-chung is authority for the statement that Wu Chao-i of Shu 
had the Five Classics printed from plates during the period 951-954. 
The T’ung-chien is more exact and says that Wu Chao-i opened schools 
and had the Nine Classics printed in 953. As this is the very year in 
which Féng Tao and his colleagues presented their completed work to 
the emperor, it is not impossible that authorities have confused the 
two events. On the other hand it is more likely that the same work 
was going on in the imperial capital and in the capital of Shu, the two 
courts rivalling each other to see which could complete the task first. 
It is certain that the text of the Stone Classics of Shu affected not 
only the Shu printing, but the printing of the imperial capital as well. 
For a fuller discussion of this whole question, see article by Wang 


Kuo-wei (= [sd XE ) in [ed eS a F\ (Journal of Sinological 
Studies) for January, 1923, pp. 139-145. It is to be noted (though 
not mentioned in the article referred to) that both Sst-ma Kuang 
and Chu Hsi, writing in the Sung dynasty, mention the early wide 
diffusion of printing in Shu and state that the Classics were printed 
there at the same time that they were being printed in the imperial 
capital. 

The conclusion of Wang Ming-ch’ing’s statement, quoted above, 
makes this dependence of Féng Tao’s work on the printing of Shu 
even more emphatic. After describing Wu Chao-i’s printing in Shu, 
he concludes, ‘When the emperor Ming Tsung conquered Shu, he 
ordered Li O, a scholar of the National Academy, to write the text 
of the Five Classics. Blocks were cut in the National Academy. This 
was the beginning of the printing of the National Academy.” 

15. This book was reprinted in Tokyo in 1884 in the collection th ie 
te ES under the title By Usa Be 45 9% fa AS Fey AE. It 
has been discussed by Pelliot (Bulletin de l’Ecole Frangaise d’Extréme- 
Orient, 1902, vol. 2. pp. 316-317) and by Wang Kuo-wei (Journal of 
Sinological Studies, Jan., 1923, vol. 1, pp. 143-145). Both Pelliot 
and Wang Kuo-wei come to the conclusion that this is a Sung reprint 


218 NOTES 


of the Li O original, and that it is probably a very exact reproduction 
of the original, but with the taboos changed. (The characters x: 
and are avoided, indicating that the reprint was made during the 
reigns of Hsiao-tsung and Kao-tsung of the Sung Dynasty). 

16. Exclusive of duplicates. 


17. The book referred to was the Hi, BRAC HE See 
5 4 Ge i #8 ic, as quoted by P. Pelliot in his article, 


Documents chinois trouvés par la Mission Koslov, Journal Asiatique, 
1914, p. 511. 


CHAPTER X 


THE HIGH TIDE OF CHINESE BLOCK PRINTING 
THE SUNG AND MONGOL DYNASTIES (960-1368) 


1. See chapter 12, note 19. 

2. See Pelliot, Bulletin Critique, etc., T’oung Pao, 1922, vol. 21, pp. 
432-434. See also chapter 12, note 17. 

3. Chapter 22. 

4. The T’ai-p’ing-kuang-chi Encyclopedia was, according to Giles, 
printed in 981 (see Giles’ account in Encyclopedia Britannica, article 
China). The Shuo-wén (Ht 3), a dictionary written about A.D. 100, 
appeared in print between 984 and 988. (See Liu An, page 6.) 

5. Chii Chung-cheng (Ai rp IE) of I-chou (Ch’éng-tu). See Liu 
An, page 6. 

6 Hh ME IE R. 

7. The full story is told by Wang Ming-ch’ing (= HA Yq), in the 
book Hui-chu-lu (FH pE Br). For Wu Chao-i’s earlier career in 
Szechuen, see previous chapter; also Liu An, page 24. 

8. The dates of the first printed edition of the dynastic histories are as 
follows (according to =f Yq ): 

Shih-chi (Ssti-ma Ts’ien) and Former Han: 994 


Three Kingdoms, Tsin and T’ang: 1000-1002 
Later Han: 1022 
North and South Dynasties and Sui: 1024-1027 


Liang, Ch’ én, etc.: 1061-1063 


CHAPTER X 219 


There is some question about the T’ang history, here assigned to 
1000-1002. It may not have been printed till 1061-1063. There 
are conflicting statements also about the date of the Later Han his- 
tory. Records of other books printed by the government printing 
office from 955 to 1026 will be found in Liu An, pp. 9-11. 

The exactness with which the dynastic histories were printed is 
described, no doubt with some exaggeration, by the Persian historian, 
Rashid-eddin. See chapter 17. 

9. This is indicated by the list of missing blocks, one of which is from 
the Han-shu. 

10. [fi ££. For full account of books published by Ch’en Chi and 
his son, see Yeh Té-hui, chiian 2, folios 28-31. 

nn. 

12, E. For full account of the work of the Yu family at Chien-an, 
see Yeh Té-hui, chiian 2, folios 13-18. 

13. AE ZF. 

14. The importance of the province of Fukien as a publishing center and 
the sort of work done in that and other provinces is thus described by 
Yeh Méng-Té, writing about 1130: “At present, of all books printed 
throughout the empire, those of Hangchow are considered the best, 
those of Szechuen come next, and those of Fukien are worst. Of late 
years the printing blocks of the capital begin to stand but little after 
those of Hangchow, but the paper used is not so fine. In Szechuen 
and Fukien, soft wood is much used for cutting into printing blocks, 
the object of which is their easy completion, with a rapid sale for the 
books. Hence the workmanship is not good. Fukien editions are 
spread all over the empire, and that is on account of the ease with 
which they are got ready.” Translation of Meadows in Miscellanies 
of the Philobiblon Society, vol. 6, pp. 15, 16. 

1s. A curious story, preserved by Kao Wén-hu ee W RB), in the 
book entitled Liao-hua-chou-hsien-lu (33 AE ro Fal Ex), tells of 


two literary graduates from Shu, who, in the first years of the Sung 
Dynasty, purchased the printed essays of the prize-winners in the 
examinations. 

16. A list of local histories of the Sung period, preserved in the T’ang 
Chung-yu collection, is found in Liu An, p. 20. “Histories” is per- 
haps a misnomer for these books. They are rather summaries of the 


220 * NOTES 


official archives, such as are still published from time to time by 
every Chinese city. 

17. A copy of this great work is in the Library of Congress at Washing- 
ton, and is described in some detail in the Report of the Librarian of 
Congress for 1923 (pp. 174-178). Among the Sung and Yuan editions 
are the following: 

Ssii-ma Kuang’s great history of China. 

Ssti-ma Kuang’s collected works (printed in 1133). 

Adventures of the Buddhist monk Hsiian Tsang in India. 

Illustrated description of crop plants (printed in 1204). 

Collected poems of Tu Fu, the T’ang poet. 

Collected poems of Su Tung-p’o, the Sung poet. 

About sixty other collections, each containing the complete works 

of some one author. 

18. From T’ien-lu-ling-lang (K Ge TK Hi), quoted by Liu An, 
pp. 51-52. 

1g. Shén Kua (1030-1093) states that it was a capital offence in the 
Liao empire for anyone to attempt to carry a book over into the 
empire of the Sungs. Another writer, however, Ch’ien Ts’eng ($e 
ci ), mentions a book printed in the Liao realm in 997 by the monk 
Chih-kuang (En IE ) and carried into China. 

In 1or2 there is a record that the kingdom of Na-shao (FS A> ) 
asked for Confucian books and a copy of each of the Classics was sent 
there. Liu An, page 12. 

20. =P BB. 

21. A special office was opened in 1194 in the Kin empire for the trans- 
lation and copying of the Classics. See Liu An, p. 13. 

22. Medical work of Sun Ssii-miao (A.D. 581-682), printed about 1300. 
Among the Koslov finds from Kara-khoto. 

23. See H. H. Howorth, History of the Mongols, vol. 1, page 274. Also 
Yule’s Marco Polo (First edition), vol. 1, page 401. 

24. 25l) A 123 AG. Printed about 1300. In Koslov collection from 
Kara-khoto. 

25. In Koslov collection from Kara-khoto. 

26. In 1391 copies of the Classics and the dynastic histories were dis- 
tributed among all the schools of North China. For additional 
particulars about early Ming printing, see Liu An, pp. 14, 26, 27. 


CHAPTER X 221 


27. Kiangsi remained an important printing center during Mongol 
times. A list of Kiangsi books of the period 1312-1321 is given in 
Liu An, page 22. 

28. Known as ¥qj {UE Flt. Another office known as §& $& A was 
opened at P’ing-yang. 

29. The central government office for the printing of books was known 
by different names at different periods in the Mongol Dynasty, cor- 
responding probably with slightly different functions. In 1236, under 
Ogatai, it was a (iE of; in 1273 under Kublai mes at BE; in 
1290 fi 3¢ BB; in 1330 BR A RE. 

30. The office for printing the “sacred teachings of the imperial ances- 


tors,” opened in 1330, was the js iin ii. 
31. See chapters 14 and 16. 


32. See Bunjiu Nanjio, Catalogue of the Chinese Translation of the Bud- 
dhist Tripitaka, page xxiv. 

33. It was in Tokyo at the time that Nanjio wrote. I have not been 
able to learn whether it survived the earthquake. 

34. Bunjiu Nanjio. See note 32 above. 

35. There are a number of books extant which with more or less reason 
claim an earlier date than 1157, but their dating is uncertain. The 
oldest claims to date from 1114. See Satow, Further Notes, etc., 
Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 1882, vol. 10, p. 257. 
According to Satow, the earliest mention in Japanese literature of 
the printing of books in Japan is in 1172, and there is a record of the 
Diamond Sutra being printed in 1184. Satow’s two articles give a list 
with dates of such Japanese printed books of the thirteenth and four- 
teenth centuries as were available at the time he wrote (1882). 
Pauthier (Mémoires de la Société des Etudes Japonaises, vol. 6, pp. 
185-186) contains the same list with certain revisions. Kamesd’s 
list (pp. 22-23), published in 1909, is more up to date and exact. 

36. Satow, History of Printing in Japan, p. 53. 

37. Chapter 14. 

38. P. Pelliot, Une Bibliotheque mediévale retrouvée au Kan Sou, Bulletin 
de l’Ecole Francaise d’Extréme-Orient, 1908, vol. 8, pp. 525-527. 

39. The information contained in this chapter concerning the Koslov 
discoveries is derived in the main from an article by P. Pelliot in 
Journal Asiatique, May-June, 1914, series 2, vol. 3, pages 503 fr.stoed 


222 NOTES 


Bibliography.) For further details the reader is referred to that article. 

40. At Tun-huang there were found dated fragments and single sheets 
earlier than 1016 and at least two undated books that are generally 
considered to have been earlier, but the Diamond Sutra of 868 is the 
only dated book that is older. Liu An’s reference to a Diamond Sutra 
of 961 from Tun-huang (page 6) seems to be due to confusion with 
the Diamond Sutra of 868. 

41. A translation not hitherto known. 

42. The patron was an official at Tan-chou (F} pI ) in Shensi (now 
I-ch’iian). The two engravers were from two subprefectures which 
are now included in the prefecture of T’ung-chou ( fr] p] ) in the 
same province. Pelliot, Journal Asiatique, 1914, pp. 507-508. 

43. Yuian-shih (3c ), chapter 18, fol. 4v°. See Pelliot, Journal 
Asiatique, 1914, p. 518. 

44. See chapter 19. 

45. $E HL RE SC. 

46. One is a commentary on Chuang-tzt, an edition apparently of the 
thirteenth century—a book lost and unknown in China from the 
fourteenth century on. The other is no. 372 in P. Wieger’s list. 

47. Cordier, Histoire de Chine, vol. 2, p. 336. 

48. Howorth, History of the Mongols, London, 1876, vol. 1, page 274; 
Yule’s Marco Polo (First edition), vol. 1, p. 401. 

49. Quoted from Yeh Méng-té by Ma Tuan-lin in Wén-hsien-t'ung-k ao. 
Translation of Meadows in Miscellanies of Philobiblon Society, 1860, 
pp. 14-15. The Chinese text is quoted by Yeh Té-hui, vol. 1, folio 24. 


CHAPTER XI 


THE PRINTING OF PAPER MONEY 
1. “As to the skin currency (RZ fips ) of the ancient kings, the feudal 


princes used to offer these skins as presents when they were invited 
to court. ‘At present’ (quoting from the annals of the reign of Wu Ti, 
(B.c. 140-86) ‘pieces of the skins of white stags are used, a foot square and 
embroidered at the hems, and of them a skin currency is made, of a 
value of forty thousand cash. Whenever kings, princes and noblemen 


CHAPTER XI 223 


of imperial clans come up to court, to have an audience with His 
Majesty and to offer presents, they receive these pieces of skin as 
badges of honor. Thereupon they will be brought in circulation, as 
they will always be desired by persons who wish to have an audience’.” 
Ma Tuan-lin (& Naa Re ), Wén-hsien-t’ ung-k’ ao (3¢ ek iff S), 
8:8a. Quotations in this chapter simply marked Ma Tuan-lin are 
from this book (published about 1319), which is the main source for 
the history of paper money. In general in these quotations the trans- 
lation of Vissering (see Bibliography) has been followed, though the 
Chinese text has been compared and where necessary the translation 
has been revised. 

. “Under the reign of the emperor Hsien Tsung (806-821), because 
money was scarce again, the use of copper tools and implements was 
prohibited. At that time merchants who came to the capital brought 
with them the money they had received in outlying provinces, and 


deposited it in the public treasury. . . . Instead of their money, 
they received certificates of indebtedness (4> FP). These bore the 
name of ‘flying money’ (Fe $B) . . . The imperial governor of 


the capital proposed to suspend the issue of paper money to the 
merchants.” Ma Tuan-lin, 8: 39, 40. Vissering, p. 120. The phrase 
Ay ZF means literally “fitting together documents.” It would seem 
to imply that the receipts were torn from the stubs, and that for 
authentication, when brought for redemption, they must again be 
fitted to the stubs, after the manner of a Chinese laundry ticket. 

. For text and translation see Vissering, p. 121. 

. As Buddhist charms had been printed in Japan some thirty years 
earlier than this, and presumably still earlier in China, it is not in- 
herently impossible that this paper money was printed. However the 
whole tenor of the references to printing in Féng Tao’s time, both in 
Shu and in the imperial capital, renders it improbable that any public 
official printing had been done a century and a half earlier. It is to 
be noted also that, while this “flying money” is appealed to as a 
precedent at the time of the first issue of true paper money in the 
Sung Dynasty, the words used to describe the new issue are all of them 
different. 

. See Terrien de Lacouperie, Paper Money of the Ninth Century, 
Numismatic Chronicle, vol. II., third series, pp. 334-341, London, 


224 NOTES 


1882; and Andrew M. Davis, Certain Old Chinese Notes, Boston, 1915. 
See also note 18. 

Ara 

7. See Vissering, p. 167. 

8. A number of facts point directly to this conclusion, which is generally 
accepted by both Chinese and Western writers. The paper money 
now extant, belonging to the fourteenth century, is clearly and beauti- 
fully printed, the seals being stamped on later in red in lieu of signa- 
ture. Such references as we have in Ma Tuan-lin, early as well as late, 
would seem to describe just such notes as those from the fourteenth 
century that have come down to us. Although the indentity of the 
Chinese words for “seal” and “print” causes some ambiguity, there 
is one passage under the year 1168 (Vissering, p. 195), where the words 
ED) iti are used, and these words, taken in connection with the con- 
text, admit of no doubt that true printing is referred to. This makes 
the printing of notes as early as 1168 a certainty. There is no reason to 
suppose that the process there described was any different from that 
previously in use. The very great quantity of notes in circulation— 
nearly two million in the period 995-998 and steadily increasing— 
would necessitate printing. During the tenth century—to which the 
above arguments do not apply with such full force as for the later 
period—the notes were produced in exactly the places where other 
printing is known to have been carried on at the same time. It is 
natural to suppose therefore that from the time of the first issue in 
Shu all notes were printed. 

g. The bills of exchange (48 +), as the notes of the eleventh century 
were called, were not convertible on demand, but were issued for a 
term of sixty-five years, with a provision, however, that under certain 
circumstances they could be redeemed at specified times every three 
years during the period. When in 1076 the issue of 1011 (these dates 
are approximate, as there are discrepancies in detail in the sources) 
came due, a new issue of 1,250,000 ¢iao was made in order to replace it, 
apparently not increasing the total circulation. The first actual in- 
crease in the total circulation was in 1094, when an additional 150,000 
was issued. Up to this time there had always been a reserve fund 
in metallic currency back of the notes, amounting to three-sevenths 
of the total circulation, but during the years between 1094 and 


CHAP LER XI 225 


1107, while circulation was largely increased, this rule was not 
followed. 

10. Vissering, pp. 207-208. 

11. H. Cordier, Histoire de Chine, vol. 2, p. 240. 

12. For table, showing year by year the issues of paper money during 
the early part of the Mongol Dynasty, see H. B. Morse, Currency in 
China, Journal China Branch Royal Asiatic Society, 1907, vol. 38, p.23. 

TR 1 Oldie Perea. 

14. See chapter 17. 

15. The Japanese notes were quite different in form from the Chinese, 
being only about six inches by two. They seem to have been well 
secured by a metallic reserve. See Yule’s Marco Polo (Cordier edi- 
tion), vol. 1, pp. 427-428; and Yule’s Cathay and the Way Thither 
(Cordier edition), vol. 3, p. 150. 

16. These writers are: William de Rubruquis (c. 1215-1270); Roger 
Bacon (1214-1294); Marco Polo (1298); Hayton (1307); Odoric 
(c. 1330); the archbishop of Soltania (c. 1330); Pegollotti (c. 1340); and 
Josafat Barbara (c. 1436). The more important of their statements are 
as follows: bh 

De Rubruquis: “The ordinary money of Cathay is made of cotton 
paper, as large as a hand, upon which they imprint certain lines and 
marks made like the seal of Mangu (imprimunt lineas sicut est 
sigellum Mangu) . . . As for the Russians, the money which is 
current among them is made of little pieces of leather, marked with 
colors.” 

Odoric: “They have an edict from their lord that every fire (i. e. 
household) shall pay to the Great Khan annually a tax of one dal/is, 
i.e., of five pieces of paper like silk, a sum equal to one florin and a 
half.” 

Pegolotti: “There (at Cassai, i. e., Hangchow) you can dispose of 
the sommi of silver (silver ingots) that you have with you, for that is 
a most active place of business. After getting to Cassai you carry on 
with the money which you get for the sommi of silver which you sell 
there; and this money is made of paper and is called da/ishi. And four 
pieces of this money are worth one sommi of silver in the province of 
Cathay.” 

Paper money was mentioned also by a number of Arabic writers, 


including Ibn Batuta (1348) and Ahmed Shibab Eddin (died 1338). 


226 NOTES 


Hayton is here included among European writers, because his 
writing was done in France and in the French language. His book 1s 
an account of the visit of his relative, the king of Armenia, to the court 
of the Great Khan. 

17. Translation of Yule (Cordier’s edition, vol. 1, pp. 423-426). 

18. Plates purporting to represent banknotes of various dynasties from 
T’ang to Yuan are contained in a pamphlet by Ramsden (H. A. 
Ramsden, Chinese Paper Money, Yokohama, 1911) and a book by 
Davis (Andrew M. Davis, Certain Old Chinese Notes, Boston, 1915). 
These plates and the information concerning them are based on a 
Chinese work entitled CW’ tian-pu-t’ ung-chih (Ft th if nse which 


I am able to state on Pelliot’s authority is a forgery. See also note 


A reproduction of a banknote found in a Chinese work, and a block 
for printing banknotes, both claiming to date from the Kin Dynasty, 
are described by Bushell (S. W. Bushell, Specimens of Ancient Chinese 
Paper Money, Journal of Peking Oriental Society, 1889, vol. 2, pp. 
308-316) and have somewhat more claim to be regarded as genuine. 

19. I am indebted for this description of the Mongol notes found by the 
Koslov expedition to Professor Basil M. Alekseiev of the Soviet Uni- 
versity of Leningrad (Petrograd) who very kindly examined and 
described them for me. 


CHAPTER XII 


EARLY COMMERCE IN THOUGHT AND IN WARES 
ALONG THE GREAT SILK WAYS 


1. For reports of recent discoveries of neolithic culture in China and a 
discussion of its relation to neolithic culture in other countries, see 
J. G. Anderson, 4n Early Chinese Culture, Bulletin of the Geological 
Survey of China, No. 5, 1923. Also J. G. Anderson, Arkeologiske 
Studier 1 Kina, Ymer, vol. 2. Stockholm, 1923. 

2. For full discussion of what Chang Ch’ien’s mission meant in the 
opening up of trade, see B. Laufer, Sino-Iranica, pp. 535 ff. Chang 
Ch’ien found bamboo staves and cloth from Szechuen already in use 
in Bactria, which he concludes came by way of India. 


CHAPTER XII 227 


3. For additional details, and translations of the Chinese sources on 
which these statements are based, see F. Hirth, China and the Roman 
Orient. 

4. The two authorities for the introduction of silkworm eggs during 
Justinian’s reign are Theophanes and Procopius. Theophanes refers 
to the country from which the silk worm eggs were introduced as the 
“land of Seres,”’ Procopius as “India.” Both terms were at that 
time used very loosely by Greek writers. It is known from Chinese 
sources that silk culture was introduced into Khotan (at the western 
end of what is now Chinese Turkestan) in 419, and it is probable 
that it was from here that the eggs were introduced into Constan- 
tinople. 

s. For fuller details and references to sources, see Beazley, Dawn of 
Modern Geography, vol. 1, pp. 186-191. 

6. See Laufer, Sino-Iranica, pp. 539-540. 

7. The chicken (or its prototype) is indigenous in northern India and 
Burmah. The date of its introduction to China cannot be determined; 
it was already known in the pre-Confucian period. It is first men- 
tioned in Babylonian inscriptions in the seventh or sixth century, 
B.c. It is not mentioned in Homer or the Old Testament, but is 
constantly mentioned in the New Testament. Aristophanes calls it 
“Persian bird.” 

The above is the generally accepted view (see Encyclopedia Bri- 
tannica, art. Fow/). It should be added however that, in view of dis- 
coveries in the tomb of Tutankhamen, and other discoveries in Egypt, 
a certain amount of modification of this theory may be necessary. 

8. The first mention of tea in Chinese literature, so far as known, is in 
the biography of Wei Chao in the San-kuo-chih (=. Ba ea Wei 
Chao died in a.p. 273 and the author of the San-kuo-chih in 297. Tea 
had, however, not spread through north China till about the tenth 
century. It was very little known among the Mongols till the thir- 
teenth or fourteenth century. (See P. Pelliot, Bulletin Critique, etc., 
T’oung Pao, 1922, vol. 21, pp. 432-434.) On the other hand, tea 1s 
described by an Arab traveller in China in the ninth century and 
its use apparently spread to Russia and Western Asia during Mongol 
times. In consequence of this the name for tea in Russian, Turkish, 
Persian and Modern Greek is based on the north Chinese ch’a. It is 
not mentioned in European literature till 1588 when it was imported 


poke NOTES 


from south China by the Portuguese, whose tea trade was soon 
superseded by that of the Dutch. Hence the word ‘tea’ and its varia- 
tions, derived probably from the dialect of Fukien, is used in the 
languages of western Europe. 

g. See chapter Ig. . 

1o. The carrot is apparently a native of northern Europe. It was culti- 
vated by the Anglo-Saxons before they invaded Britain. It was 
carried by the Arabs into Persia in the tenth century. From there it 
entered China during the Mongol Empire. Laufer, Sino-Iranica, 
PP: 451-454. 

11. The first mention of glass in China is during the time of the Three 
Kingdoms between 221 and 264 a.p. The glass here mentioned was 
probably imported from Alexandria. The manufacture of glass was 
apparently introduced into north China and south China indepen- 
dently and both during the 5th century. According to the annals of 
the Wei Dynasty, glass-making was introduced into north China 
between the years 424 and 452 from the kingdom of the Indo-Scythi- 
ans (probably Khotan). According to the annals of the Sung (Liu 
Sung) Dynasty, the Emperor of Ta Ts’in (Rome or Constantinople) 
sent to the Emperor Wén Ti (424-454) a large variety of presents 
made of glass of all colors, and some years later a workman in glass 
who “‘was able to change fire stones into crystals, and who taught his 
secret to his pupils, whereby great glory was gained by all those coming 
from the West.” S. W. Bushell, Chinese Art, vol. 2, pp. 58-69. 

12. All true alphabets in the world appear to have sprung from one 
early source in Phenicia and Palestine. This alphabet reached India 
from its source by the Mediterranean almost as soon as it reached 
Greece. Through the early centuries of the Christian era the Indian 
forms of the alphabet vied with those coming directly from Syria for 
supremacy in Central Asia. The Tibetan alphabet, one of the Mongol 
alphabets, and the Korean alphabet were based on Sanskrit; while 
the alphabet of the Manchus, which is still seen on Chinese coins, 

. goes back ultimately to a Syriac source, through Sogdian, Uigur and 
Mongol as intermediaries. 

13. The history of spinach and of sugar are also interesting as showing 
how ideas found their way in these early days through Asia and - 
Europe. The earliest known reference to spinach in any literature is 
contained in the annals of the T’ang Dynasty, where it is stated that 


CHAPUBRS XII 229 


in the year 647 the king of Nepaul sent some spinach to the Chinese 
Emperor T’ai Tsung. There is some evidence that Nepaul got its 
spinach from Persia. At any rate it was in Persia that the Arabs 
found the vegetable not long after their conquest of the country. 
By the eleventh century it had spread through the Arabic dominions 
as far as Spain, but it was not until the fourteenth or fifteenth cen- 
tury—after the Crusades—that its entrance into Christendom 1s 
recorded. (Laufer, Sino-Iranica, pp. 392-398.) 

Sugar cane was imported into China as early as A.D. 285 from Indo- 
China and was again imported into China from Persia during the 
seventh century. During the seventh century also a special mission 
was sent by the Chinese Emperor to Magadha in India to learn the 
process of boiling sugar, and this Indian method was adopted by the 
sugar-growers of Yang-chou. Through the Middle Ages the Saracen 
Empire was the center of sugar production. Sugar-cane was intro- 
duced by the Arabs from Persia into Egypt, Sicily and the south of 
Spain. As late as the thirteenth century sugar refiners from Cairo 
came to China to teach the superior methods of sugar refining that 
were practised in Egypt. From Cyprus and Sicily sugar production 
was carried to Madeira about 1420 and to the Canaries in 1503. Sugar 
production in Brazil and Haiti began also very soon after the discovery 
of America. 

Other examples of the spread of ideas through the Euro-Asiatic 
continent are found in the study of such games as dice, chess and 
backgammon. The spread of playing cards, as more closely related to 
printing, is studied in chapter Ig. 

14. Berthold Laufer, Sino-Iranica, Chicago, 1919. The writer is in- 
debted to this book for most of the material in this chapter concerning 
agricultural plants. 

15. Yahb-allaha III, patriarch of the whole Nestorian church, with 
seat at Bagdad, 1281-1317. 

16. This place, rendered in Arabic Hanfu, has sometimes been identified 
with Hangchow. For its identification with Canton see statement by 
Pelliot in T’oung Pao, 1922, vol. 21, p. 410. 

17. G. Schlegel, On the Invention and Use of Firearms and Gunpowder in 
China prior to the Arrival of Europeans, ‘T’oung Pao, 1902, series 2, 
vol. 3, pp. 1-11; P. Pelliot, Bulletin Critique, etc., T’oung Pao, 1922, 
vol. 21, pp. 432-434. 


230 NOTES 


18. There are certain indications that the compass may have been used 
for navigation in south China about the fifth century, but it cannot 
be stated with certainty. 

19. F. Hirth, History of Ancient China, pp. 126-136; Jules Klaproth, 
Lettre a2 M. le Baron A. de Humboldt sur Pinvention de le boussole, 
Paris, 1834. 


CHAPTER XIII 


PAPER’S THOUSAND YEAR JOURNEY FROM CHINA 
TO EUROPE 


1, A. Blanchet, Essai sur histoire du papier, pp. 16-17. Note espe- 
cially quotations from Chou-tien-p’u, Tien-chen-p’u, and Pen-ts’ao- 
kang-mu. 

. This paper from Loulan, containing a fragment from the Classics, is 
undated, the date being estimated from the style of writing, etc. The 
oldest certain dated document from Loulan (which is the oldest dated 
paper yet found) is of the year 264. Another fragment probably 
bears the date of 252, but the year cannot be deciphered with cer- 
tainty. 

3. There are one or two isolated points where the use of wood for writing 
parallel with that of paper persisted. At Miran it continued till about 
the eighth century. Otherwise the triumph of paper by the end of the 
fifth century was complete. | 

4. A. F. R. Hoernle, Who was the Inventor of Rag Paper? Journal of 
Royal Asiatic Society, 1903, pp. 663 fF. 

5. F. Hirth, Chinese Studies, page 270. 

6. The raw fibers are largely those of paper mulberry, laurel and China 
grass (Boehmeria Nivea). 

7. The following, written in Parma in 1782 by Andrez, and quoted by 
Thomas (Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America, Worces- 
ter, Mass., 1810, pp. 37-38), indicates one of the views that used to 
be held with regard to cotton paper, “Paper made from silk was 
anciently fabricated in China, the art of making this paper was carried 
from China to Persia about the year 652 and to Mecca in 706. The 
Arabs substituted cotton and carried the art of paper-making into 
Africa and Spain.” 


vb 


CHAPTER XIII 231 


8. The earliest paper in the collection is believed to date somewhere 
between the year 796 and 816. See Grohmann, page 58. Karabacek 
would date it a few years earlier than 796. 

g. The famous manuscript of the Convent of San Gilos, dating from 
1129, has alternate pages of parchment and paper. This may have 
been paper imported from Africa, though it is more likely that it was 
Spanish, and would therefore antedate the statement here quoted 
from E]-Edrisi. 

10. Cologne and Mainz both claim to have had paper factories as early 
as 1320, but the claim is disputed. Nuremberg’s manufacture of 
paper is the first that is known with certainty. 

11. It seems fitting that Nuremberg should have been the home a 
century later of Albrecht Diirer, who was not only Germany’s greatest 
painter, but also a maker of woodcuts on paper. 

12. For further details and dates as to the progress of paper, see the 
accompanying map and chart. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE PRINTING OF THE UIGUR TURKS 
IN THE REGION OF TURFAN 


1. This mingling is illustrated in the Buddhist monastery of Toyok 
near Turfan, which now through a curious confusion of faiths has 
become a point of pilgrimage for Moslems from India and Arabia. 
Among the papers found in this old monastery were an enormous 
number of Chinese Buddhist manuscripts, fragments of Indian manu- 
scripts written on birch bark and on palm leaf, fragments in a still 
unknown Semitic script, several manuscripts in old Turkish runes, 
some Sogdian writings, Manichean writings in Turkish and Persian, 
Uigur writings in four different kinds of script, some Syriac fragments, 
some Manichean and Buddhist embroideries, and some beautiful 
Manichean miniatures. In the ruin of an old church near by are a 
large number of Christian texts in Syriac. No wonder the Mohamme- 
dans regard as sacred the place where so many peoples and faiths 
have met! 

2. See chapter 8. 

3. Only a part of this book—some ten leaves—has been found. 


gts) NOTES 
4. The Tangut script was officially adopted in 1036. For brief descrip- 


tion and historical sketch of the Tanguts, see Cordier, Histoire de 
Chine, vol. 2, pp. 199-203. 


5. Itis interesting to note that these six languages are exactly the same 


e 


as those which Pelliot found in manuscript and printed remains in 
one of the later caves at Tun-huang. Furthermore a stone found at 
Tun-huang, dated 1348, contains parallel inscriptions in these same 
six languages. And four of these languages (all except Mongol and 
Sanskrit) are mentioned by De Rubruquis as the languages used for 
writing at the Mongol court when he visited the Grand Khan in the 
middle of the thirteenth century. 


. See chapter 22. 
. “The Uigurs, an ancient Tartar people, have at all times been cele- 


brated in Tartary. They have cultivated sciences and arts... . 
They write like the Chinese from the top down; and were the first to 
use wooden blocks for printing.”” De Guignes, Histoire des Huns, 
1, VII. Strange to say, this was written in the eighteenth century, 
before the discovery of any of the Uigur printing at Turfan. 


. F.H. Skrine and E. D. Ross, Heart of Asia. London, 1899. Pp. 155- 


157. 

“During the reign of the grandsons of Jinghis Khan, the accountants 
and chief officers of government in Mavara-un-Nar, in Khorasan and 
in Irak were all Uigurs. Similarly it was the Uigurs who filled these 
posts in China during the reigns of the sons of Jinghis. Ogatai en- 
trusted Khorasan, Mazandaran and Gilan to a Uigur named Kurguz, 
who was well versed in keeping accounts, and knew thoroughly how to 
levy in these provinces the taxes, which he remitted regularly each 
year to Ogatai.” Abul Ghazi, quoted by N. Elias and E. D. Ross, 
The Tarikh-i-Rashidi, page 94. There are many other notices to the 
same effect, both in Chinese and in Arabic. 


CHAPTER XV 
ISLAM AS A BARRIER TO PRINTING 


. Itis probable that an edition of Réshid had already appeared at Con- 


stantinople in 1714 under similar auspices. These were the only two 
books published. 


2. 


Go 


_ 


GEAR TER OO. 939 


I am indebted to Dr. Grohmann for the statement that, according to 
Theseus Ambrosius (d. 1540) in the book Introductio in Chaldaicam 
Linguam (Pavia, 1539), folio 11, Father Alessandro de Paginini of 
Brescia, who printed in Venice between 1485 and 1499, brought out 
an edition of the Koran in Arabic type. This was without doubt the 
oldest Arabic printing in Europe. 

At Fano Arabic printing was done in 1514, and in 1518 it seems 
probable that another edition of the Koran was printed in Italy. 


. For English translation of Chou Ju-kua’s works, with valuable intro- 


duction and notes, see F. Hirth and W. W. Rockhill, Chau Fu-kua, 
St. Petersburg, IgII. 


. Travels of Ibn Batuta, translated by Samuel Lee. London, 1829. 


Pp. 215-216. There has recently been some doubt expressed as to 
whether Ibn Batuta was ever in China. (Gabriel Ferrand, Relation de 
voyages, etc., Paris, 1913.) Whether Ibn Batuta was ever in China 
himself, the book expresses the view of Arabs of his day, and further- 
more it contains a true picture of China that could only have been 
derived from the narrative of a traveller in that country. 


Py nce. chapter 17; 


CHAPTER XVI 


THE MEETING OF CHINA AND EUROPE IN THE 
MONGOL EMPIRE 


. “It seems that at that time Eastern Mongolia was connected with 


Persia and Russia by great highways through Central Asia. The 
Chinese and Mongol writers of that period record that Genghis Khan 
on his expedition to Western Asia in 121g first established these roads 
and had great difficulty in leading them through the inaccessible 
mountains which in some places stopped the passage. It is further 
related that the great conqueror’s successor, Ogatai, established on 
these roads military stations on a large scale. At that time considerable 
Mongol armies were sent repeatedly to the far West, overrunning 
Western Asia and the eastern part of Europe. Couriers passed hither 
and thither, as well as envoys from different Western kingdoms. 
There have been preserved five Chinese narratives of journeys to the 
far West, published in the thirteenth century.” E. Bretschneider, 
Mediaeval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources, vol. 1, p. 4. 


234 NOTES 


2. See chapter 14, esp. note 4. 

3. For Mongol paper money, see chapter 11. For other printing in the 
Mongol language found at Turfan and Tun-huang, and for records of 
Mongol printing in China, see chapters Io and 14. 

4. For further details with regard to the Chinese prints of Kara-khoto, 
see chapter 10. Also P. Pelliot, Les documents chinois trouvés par la 
Mission Koslov 2 Khara-khoto, Journal Asiatique, 1914, series 2, vol. 3, 
pp- 503-518. For information about the Tangut and Mongol prints, 
I am indebted to Professor Basil M. Alexeiev of the University of 
Leningrad (Petrograd), who has very kindly examined them for me. 

5. Chapter Io. 

6. For this statement of John of Plano Carpini, and for discussion of its 
implications, see P. Pelliot, Les Mongols et la Papauté, Revue de 
Orient Chrétien, series 3, vol. 3 (23), nos. I and 2 (1922-1923), pp. 
27-28. An impression from this same seal, recently found in the 
archives of the Vatican, is reproduced (with translation) in the same 
article, page 22. 

7. The currency of Russia in earlier times had been the furs of animals, 
especially the Siberian squirrel, which were worth an exact weight of 
silver. It is generally believed by Russian writers that during Mongol 
times, under the influence of the paper-money of the rest of the 
Mongol empire, the Russians began to use, instead of whole furs, 
small pieces of fur stamped by the government and redeemable in the 
stores of the government for whole skins. The matter is the subject 
of some debate. It is discussed and a full bibliography given by A. L. 
von Ebengreuth in Al/gemeine Miinzkunde und Geldgeschichte, Munich 
and Berlin, 1904, page 36. 

. The Latin is typographos artifices. The word typographos is probably 
used loosely for ordinary Chinese printing rather than for typography. 
I have therefore translated it merely “printers.” 

g. “Quod maxime mirandum videtur, ibi (Canton) esse typographos 
artifices, qui libros historias et sacrorum ceremonias continentes, more 
nostro imprimant: quorum longissima folia introrsus quadrata serie 
complicentur. Cuius generis volumen a rege Lusitaniae cum ele- 
phante dono missum Leo pontifex humaniter nobis ostendit: ut 
hinc facile credamus eius artis exempla antequam Lusitani in Indiam 
penetrarint per Scythas et Moscos ad incomparabile litterarum 
praesidium ad nos pervenisse.”” Paulus Jovius (Paulo Giovio), 


lee) 


CHAPTER XVI O06 


Historia sui Temporis (originally published in 1550), edition of 1558, 
book 1, chapter 14, page 161. This earliest Furopean mention of 
Chinese printing has apparently not before been noticed except in an 
unpublished manuscript in St. Bride’s Library, London, by Richard 
Smith, written in 1670, in which Jovius’ view that printing was intro- 
duced from the “Indians of Cataia” by means of “the Scythians and 
Muscovites” is rather unfavorably discussed. Jovius had been an 
ambassador to Moscow not long after the new Russian state had 
freed itself from Mongol domination, and has left a history of Russia 
as well as several books descriptive of that country. His statements 
concerning Russia therefore carry considerable weight. On the other 
hand, he quotes no authority, and his statement may be only a con- 
jecture, based on his general knowledge of Russian history and of 
Chinese printing. 

10. This letter from the Grand Khan to the Pope was discovered in the 
Archivio di Castello by P. Cyrille Karalevskyj. It was identified 
and deciphered by Pelliot, and has been published by him, to- 
gether with a facsimile of its seals. (Paul Pelliot, Les Mongols et la 
Papauté, Revue de l’Orient Chrétien, 1922-1923, series 3, vol. 3 (23), 
nos. I and 2, pp. 3-30). The seal impressions, like the Chinese seal 
impressions on the letters from the Persian Ilkhans (see chapter 17, 
note 2) are 5% inches square, but these are in Mongol, not Chinese. 
Pelliot (pp. 27-28) has given his reasons for concluding that these 
seal impressions were made from the seal described by Carpini 
and cut by the Russian seal cutter Cosmas. Some half dozen other 
letters from Mongol sovereigns (most of them from Ilkhans of Persia) 
have also recently been found in the Vatican archives, and will be 
published in forthcoming numbers of the same review. A list of these 
documents will be found in the article already published (see above), 
pp. 2 and 3. ; 

11. A number of Chinese seals were dug up in Ireland about 1800 and 
are described in a paper read before the Belfast Literary Society by 
Edmund Getty in 1850, entitled, Notices of Chinese Seals found in 
Ireland. Getty believes that they were brought to Ireland by 
early monks and date from the eighth or ninth century, but it is more 
than probable that they were brought by Irish sailors at a much 
later date. 

12. De Rubruquis, Latin edition of d’Avezac, page 329. Additional 


236 NOTES 


interest attaches to the reports of De Rubruquis, on account of the 
fact that Roger Bacon read his book and was personally acquainted 
with him after his return from Central Asia. (Opus Majus, Oxford 
edition of 1897, vol. 1, pp. 353-366.) 

13. It is Pauthier’s edition of Marco Polo (G. Pauthier, Le Jivre de 
Marco Polo, introduction, page 78) that has given currency to this 
story. Pauthier’s statement is quoted from Delpierre (Octave Del- 
pierre, Analyse des travaux de la Société Philobiblon & Londres, page 
23), which is in turn quoted from a paper read by R. Curzon before the 
Philobiblon Society in 1860. (Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society 
of London, vol. 6, page 25). On what Curzon based his statement is 
uncertain. It seems probable that it was an old Italian tradition. 

14. See chapter 11. 

15. The signification of “Tarsic” is uncertain. Cordier (Histoire de 
Chine, vol. 2, p. 413) suggests Estrangelo script. Ross (E. D. Ross, 
Tarikh-t-Rashidt, p. 96), commenting on this passage, says it means 
Uigur. Whatever the script may have been, the language was prob- 
ably either Uigur or Mongol. 

16. Seven were actually sent, but only three arrived. 

17. The later history of this first phase of Catholic missions in China is 
shrouded in mystery. On the death of Monte Corvino in 1328, Friar 
Nicholas of Paris was sent out from Avignon to succeed him, accom- 
panied by twenty monks and six lay brothers. They left Avignon in 
1333, and in 1338 are heard of at Almaligh in Eastern Turkestan. 
By this time Islam was rapidly gaining ground in Eastern Turkestan 
and the land route was becoming increasingly difficult. There is no 
record that they ever reached China. However, in 1338 Europeans 
arrived in China with letters written in 1336, and again in 1342 the 
Pope sent an embassy, headed by Marignolli, who after four years 
returned to Europe and wrote an account of his journey. After 
Marignolli’s return in 1346 nothing further is known with certainty 
of the mission in China, though there are indications that the last 
missionaries in Fukien were martyred in 1362. From the Avignon 
end it is known that more missionaries were sent out. William of 
Prato was made archbishop of Cambaluc in 1370 and sixty clergy 
followed him. Francis of Podio was sent the next year as apostolic 
legate with twelve followers. The Vatican records show a full line of 
archbishops of Cambaluc through the next century. But, so far as 


> 


CHAPTER XVI 237 


known, they went out into the darkness, never to be heard of again. 
The break-up of the power of the Ikhans of Persia and the renewed 
activity of the Turks closed both the land route and the water route 
between Europe and the Far East, while the fall of Mongol power in 
China in 1368 rendered China inhospitable to foreigners. For a 
century and a half the barrier between China and the West was 
seldom crossed. Columbus tried to reopen a route for intercourse in 
1492, Vasco Da Gama succeeded in 1499. But even after the discovery 
of this lengthy route around Africa, it was centuries before China and 
Europe came again so close together as they had been during the time 
of the Mongols. 

18. Further exploration of libraries and archives in Italy may add 
evidence with regard to this hypothesis. In 1922, in the Laurentian 
Library in Florence there was rediscovered a Latin manuscript Bible 
that had been in use in China by missionaries of the Mongol period. 
Unfortunately none of the Chinese or Mongol Christian literature 
that they prepared has yet been discovered. It would also be interest- 
ing to discover how many of this company of missionaries returned to 
Europe when the Mongol Empire broke up, and what they did after 
their return. 

19. In 1305 John of Monte Corvino had seen no European for twelve 
years, though a “Master Peter,” a “great merchant,” had accom- 
panied him to Cambaluc. It was probably between 1310 and 1320 
that commercial intercourse on a larger scale began. 

20. See note 9. 


CHAPTER XVII 


PERSIA, THE CROSSROADS BETWEEN THE EAST 
AND THE WEST 


1. Ghazan Khan in 1295 had proclaimed himself independent of the 
Peking court, but these seals indicate that even in 1305 the indepen- 
dence was not quite complete. At least the Great Seal was still derived 
from China. 

2. The earlier of the two letters in the Paris archives from the Persian 
Ilkhans is dated 1289. The seal impressions are in red ink and consist 
of Chinese characters. They are 5% inches square. The second letter 
with similar seals is dated 1305. A duplicate of this was sent to 


238 NOTES 


Edward II. of England (Yule, Marco Polo, Cordier edition, vol. 2, 
Pp. 444.) 

Recently, in the archives of the Vatican, a whole series of other 
letters from the Ilkhans of Persia has been found. A list of these is 
contained in an article by Pelliot in a recent number of the Revue de 
’Orient Chrétien (see Bibliography), and the documents will be pub- 
lished in later numbers of the same review. 

3. Yule, Marco Polo, Cordier edition, vol. 2, p. 477, note. 

. Lbid., vol. 1, pp. 119-121. Two letters from the Nestorian patriarch 
Mar Yahb-alaha III. (Rabban Marcos) to the Pope, dated 1302 and 
1304, have recently been found in the archives of the Vatican. The 
text is Arabic and the seals Uigur. Pelliot has announced his in- 
tention of publishing these two letters in a forthcoming number of the 
Revue de |’Orient Chrétien. 

5. The name of this Chinese general was Kuo K’an (Mongol, Kuka 
Ilka). He commanded the right flank of the Mongol army in its ad- 
vance on Bagdad and remained in charge of the city after its sur- 
render. His life in Chinese has been preserved. E. Bretschneider, 
Mediaeval Researches, vol. 1, p. 4. 


aN 


6. Yule, Marco Polo, Cordier edition, vol. 1, page 76, note. 
7. H.H. Howorth, History of the Mongols, Part III, p. 629. 
8. For a fuller narrative of the relations between Venice and Persia 


during this period, see H. H. Howorth, History of the Mongols, Part 
III, pp. 631-633. It is evident that during a part of this time Venice 
maintained consuls not only at Tabriz but in other cities of Persia 
as well. 

g. There is no literary record of the Egyptian block printing activity 
described in the next chapter. We have only the prints themselves 
as evidence. 

10. The word appears both in Chinese character (gb ch’ao,) and in 
Arabic transliteration. This character was first applied to paper 
money in the Sung Dynasty, and is still the usual word used. 

11. It has been calculated that 1294 was the very year that Marco Polo 
was in Tabriz. Malcolm has even suggested that Marco had something 
to do with proposing this issue of paper money. Yule, Marco 
Polo, Cordier edition, vol. 1, pp. 428-429, note. 

12. Yule, Marco Polo, Cordier edition, vol. 1, pp. 428-429, note; 
Browne, Persian Literature under the Tartar Dominion, pp. 37-39. 


CHAPTER XVII 239 


13. For the early history of paper money in Europe, see chapter 21, 
note 6. 

14. Ghazan had been governor of Khorassan in 1294 at the time of the 
issue of paper money. He refused to have any ch’ao khanahs (paper 
money offices) opened in his province. Yule, Marco Polo, Cordier 
edition, vol. 1, pp. 428-429, note. 

1s. Rashid-eddin was made vizier about 1298. He presented his Great 
Universal History (Fami’u’t-Tawérikh) to Uljaitu, Ghazan’s successor, 
in 1310 or 1311. He was put to death by Uljaitu’s successor, Abusaid, 
on Sept. 13, 1318. For further details of his life and work, see H. H. 
Howorth, History of the Mongols, Part I, Preface; E. G. Browne, 
Notes on the Contents of Tarikh-i-Fahan-Gusha, Journal of the Royal 
Asiatic Society, 1904, p. 28; E. G. Browne, Persian Literature under 
the Mongol Dominion, pp. 68-75; Henry Yule, Cathay and the Way 
Thither, Cordier edition, vol. 3, pp. 108-133. 

16. Translation of E. G. Browne (Edward G. Browne, 4 History of 
Persian Literature under Tartar Dominion, Cambridge, 1920, pp. 
102-103.) Browne’s translation is from the Ta’rikh-t-Bandkati 
(see note 19, below) which appeared in 1317, and which took over this 
description from Rashid’s history. For translation of the same passage 
in French, made directly from Rashid, see Jules Klaproth, Lettre a 
M. le Baron A. de Humboldt sur Pinvention de la boussole, Paris, 1834, 
pp. 131-132. Klaproth’s translation does not differ essentially from 
that of Browne. 

17. See chapter 15. 

18. For full list of these twenty-six MSS., see E. G. Browne, Suggestions 
for a completed Translation of the fami'w’t, etc., Journal of the Royal 
Asiatic Society, 1908, pp. 33-37: 

19. Rawdatu Uli’ LAlbéb fi tawarikhi’l-Akdbir wa’l-Ansdéb by Abu 
Sulayman Da’ud of Bandkat in Transoxiana, completed in 1317, and 
usually known as the Ta’rikh-i-Banékati. The author was contem- 
porary with Rashid and was poet-laureate under Ghazan Khan from 
1301 to 1302. Five of the nine sections of his history are devoted to 
non-Moslem peoples and bear the titles, The Fews, The European 
Nations, including the Roman Emperors and the Popes, The Indians, 
The Chinese and The Mongols. The section on Europe has references 
to Portugal, Poland, Bohemia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Lombardy, 
Paris and Cologne. See E. G. Browne, 4 History of Persian Literature 


240 NOTES 


under Tartar Dominion, pp. 100-102. Apparently it was through 
Banakati that Rashid’s description came to the attention of Gerard 
Meerman, who quoted from it in his Origines Typographicae in 1765. 
See Introduction, note 2. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


BLOCK PRINTING IN EGYPT DURING THE PERIOD 
OF THE CRUSADES 


1. In addition to the prints at Vienna, there are six of similar character 
in the University Library at Heidelberg (first detected as block prints 
by Grohmann in 1922), one in the Neues Museum at Berlin, and 
several in Cairo. I have been informed that there are also two similar 
prints in the British Museum, but have been unable to find them 
there. One of the block prints at Heidelberg is on parchment. All 
others are on paper. 

2. The approximate date 1350 as terminus ad quem is certain, for the 
quantities of dated documents (written) end at this time and it is 
clear that nothing was added later. It is also clear that some of the 
block prints date from near the end of this period, as they are in forms 
of script that did not exist earlier. The dating of the earliest prints is 
more difficult. No. 946 (the one here reproduced) is clearly, from the 
point of view of script, the oldest. This is dated by Karabacek as 
tenth century. Moritz comments on this “earlier than goo rather than 
later.” Dr. Grohmann (in reviewing a tentative draft of my chapter) 
writes, “Number 946 should from the paleographic standpoint be 
dated in the eighth century a.p. If Karabacek and I have assigned 
this print to the tenth century, it is a concession to the feeling that 
at so early a period the Koran could not have been printed on paper. 
. . . Number 948 however, like all the other prints, including 
charms, is certainly later than No. 946, which thus represents the 
oldest print.” This is the paleographic evidence. After studying 
other sides of the question, I cannot help wondering whether the 
conclusions based on paleography are final. There is always the 
possibility that the blocks were cut at a later date in imitation of early 
manuscripts. All that can be said with certainty about date is that 


wn > 


CHAPTER XVIII 241 


the whole collection is earlier than the middle of the fourteenth 
century. 

No. 946 in the Erzherzog Rainer Collection. 

No. 948 in the Erzherzog Rainer Collection. 

With some of the bits of printing in Egypt, there were found frag- 
ments which seem to bear clear traces of Turfan art, among them a 


tiny but beautifully colored Buddha. 


. The earliest recorded importation of Turkish slave-mercenaries to 


Bagdad was in 673. In 808 they are first heard of in Egypt. From 
about 828 to the end of the Caliphate, the Caliphs of Bagdad were 
little more than playthings in the hands of their Turkish bodyguard. 
In 830 Egypt was given as fief to a Turkish general. From this time 
down to 1517, except during the years 969-1171, Egypt was under 
the rule of individuals of Turkish origin. Till 868 these rulers were 
Turkish generals in the employ of the Bagdad Caliph—one of whom in 
856 started the practice of filling all the chief offices in the state with 
Turks. From 868 Egypt became a separate power under Turkish 
dynasties, usually including as one of its provinces such part of 
Palestine as was not occupied by the Crusaders. To maintain this 
power a Turkish army was necessary, for which a constant stream of 
recruits from Central Asia kept pouring in. 


CHAPTER XIX 


PLAYING CARDS AS A FACTOR IN THE WESTWARD 
MOVEMENT OF PRINTING 


. “Hung Tsun-hsii, writing in the Sung Dynasty, states, ‘Backgammon 


had its origin in western India, spread into Wei (the name of North 
China during the period of the Three Kingdoms, A.D. 220-265), 
became general under the Liang, Ch’en, Wei, Ch’i, Sui and T’ang 
Dynasties, and up to the time of the emperor T’ai Tsung of our own 
Dynasty’.’’ Karl Himly, Die Abteilung der Spiele in ‘Spiegel der 
Mandschu Sprache, T’oung Pao, 1898, vol. 9, pp. 299-321. According 
to Himly, there is a reference to backgammon in Japan in the Nihongi 
under date 690-697, and there are other Chinese and Japanese 


authorities who agree that backgammon came from India. 


242 NOTES 


2. From very early times (at least from the middle of the Chou Dynasty) 
there had been a game of ch’i in China which is commonly translated 
chess. The history of this game is discussed by E. H. Parker in the 
China Review for 1889 (vol. 18, page 54). This game has survived 
under the name of wei ch’i. It is much more complicated than our 
chess. The history of the Indian game of Asiang chi or “elephant 
chess,” which is more analogous to our own game, has been traced 
by Himly in Chinese and Manchu sources. (T’oung Pao, March 
1897, vol. 8, pp. 155-180; and Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgen- 
landischen Gesellschaft, vol. 41, pp. 461 ff.) According to Himly, the 
first reference to the Indian game in Chinese sources is in the year 
569, and is quoted in the T’ai-p’ing-yii-lan Encyclopedia of 984. It 
seems to have migrated from India both to China and to Persia in 
the sixth and seventh centuries, and to have reached Japan also before 
the end of the seventh century. The above conclusions must be taken 
tentatively. Confusion of terms between the Chinese and Indian 
games makes it difficult to trace the early history of chess in China 
with certainty. Parker finds a certain amount of indication that 
hsiang chi was not an importation from India but had an independent 
Chinese origin, going back possibly even farther than wei ch’i. In 
any case it was in all probability the Indian game rather than the 
Chinese that was back of the Arabic game that was in turn back of 
European chess. 

Some points in the Chinese game as played to-day are of historic 
interest. The castle, called chi, chariot, is the most powerful piece, as 
with certain limitations, it can jump over intervening pieces like the 
knight. The knight’s move is the same as ours, and the piece is called 
ma, horse. There is an additional piece called p’ao, a word which in 
modern Chinese is written with a fire radical and means “cannon,” 
but which before the invention of gunpowder was written with a 
stone radical and meant a mechanical device for hurling stones. The 
transitional form of warfare finds an echo in chess, for the blue p’ao 
is written with a stone radical, (Ftd, while the red corresponding 
piece has the fire radical ( Kf). Likewise the bishop, which has the 
same move as ours, retains on the blue side of the board its Indian 
name of “elephant” ( R), while on the red side it changes to a 
word pronounced exactly the same but meaning “prime minister” 


CHAPTER XIX 243 
(FH). As in the Indian, Arabic and early European games, there is 


no queen. 

3. See Encyclopedia Britannica, article Polo. 

4. “In the annals of the Ch’i Dynasty under the date so! a.p. ( cp Eiit ) 
it is stated: ‘According to T’ao Shih-hsin ( WJ ae AJ ) dice (8 
Ff) are a foreign game, which Lao-tzii found when he was in the 
land of the Western Barbarians (HA). In recent years officials are 
playing it very much. How does it come about that they waste their 
time with foreign things and do not help their own country?’” 


T’u-shu-chi-ch’ éng Encyclopedia, section entitled Bh iy Hf, sub- 


section TH BX 4 (book 807, folio 6). 

§. Various origins of the names, yeh-fzii-hsi (BE + Bt) and yeh-tzit-ko, 
(HE f- ké ) “leaf-game,” “leaf dice” or “sheet-dice,” have been 
suggested. According to the Tz’#-yiian Encyclopedia, quoting from 
Kuei T’ien-lu, “The books of the T’ang Dynasty were all in the form 
of rolls. Later came pages like those in use to-day. When it was 
necessary to have any written matter ready for quick examination, 
it was made on pages. In the same way, in order to have dice in a 
convenient form, they were made on cards, and this was the origin of 
the word, yeh-tzii-ko (from yeh-tzii, a leaf or page). Before the end of 
the T’ang Dynasty there were already such ‘leaf-dice’.”” From other 
sources it is known that the transition from rolls to paged books was 
due to the influence of printing. It is a natural supposition that the 
first putting of dice on cards was due to the same influence. There 
are other theories of the origin of the word yeh-tzii-hsi, some connecting 
it with a man or woman by the name of Yeh, but the theory here 
given is the one most generally received. 

The conclusions here stated with regard to the origin of playing 
cards, dominoes and Mah Jongg are based on somewhat obscure 
sources, and, while the writer believes them to be correct, he states 
them with considerable reserve. They are the conclusions that he has 
come to after reading the long article on early games in the T’u-shu- 
chi-ch’éng Encyclopedia and shorter articles in the T’zi-yiian Encyclo- 
pedia, and comparing the citations from certain of the early writers 
quoted in these articles. It may be that the influence of paper money 
on the origin of playing cards should be more stressed. For an able 


244 NOTES 


exposition of this view see Stewart Culin, The Game of Ma-fFong, 
Brooklyn Museum Quarterly, October, 1924. 

6. For Rémusat’s statement and for translation of the passage in the 
Chéng-tzii-t' ung Encyclopedia from which it is taken, see W. H. Wilkin- 
son, Chinese Origin of Playing Cards, American Anthropologist, 1895, 
vol. 8, pp. 61-78. 

>. “According to the History of the Liao Dynasty, the emperor Mu 
Tsung, in the 19th year of the period Ying-li (969) . . . made 
reference to the game of cards when he said to his ministers, “Games 
of cards were played in the house of Duke Ch’ien, and in that very 
year in the second month he was killed by Siao-ko, ruler and subjects 
became victims of barbarity, and misfortune followed misfortune. 
Yet such unlucky objects are now held in the hand daily by scholars 
and officials. Is not that the following of an evil example?’ ” T’u-shu- 
chi-ch’éng Encyclopedia. See note 4 (above) for full reference. 

8. This is the conclusion reached after conversation on the subject with 
such eminent Arabists as Dr. Grohmann of Prague, Dr. Margoliouth 
of Oxford, and Dr. Moritz of Berlin. 

g. It is probable that the first mention of chess in Europe is in the year 
1061, and thus antedates by a few years the first Crusade. The Cru- 
sades and the Christian conquest of Spain had the effect of spreading 
the game through Europe. 

10. The very early introduction of chess into England is indicated by 
the great variety of uses of the word “check” (including “bank check” 
and the verb “to check”) all of which go back to chess and so ulti- 
mately back to the Persian word “shah.” 

11. Here are included the supposed references to cards in England in 
1240 and 1278, in Germany in 1291 and 1300, in France in 1328 and 
1376. 

12. Brit. Mus. MS. Egerton 2,419. 

13. Prohibition of cards by John I. of Castile. 

14. Account book of Jeanne, Duchess of Brabant, May 14, 1379. 

15. “In the year 1379 was brought into Viterbo the game of cards, 
which comes from the country of the Saracens, and is with them called 
naib.” Covelluzo of Viterbo, writing in the fifteenth century, on the 
authority of a chronicle of one of his ancestors. 

16. “Given to Jacquemin Grigonneur, painter, for three packs of cards 
(jeux de cartes) in gold and other colors, ornamented with various 


CHAPTER XIX 245 


” 


devices, for the diversion of the king, 75 sous of Paris.” Accounts of 
the treasurer of the household of Charles VI. of France, 1392 or 1393. 

17. The earliest references to playing cards give as a rule no clear indica- 
tion of the method of manufacture. Even the order given in 1392 for 
three packs of cards for the King of France, which uses specifically 
the word painter, gives no suggestion what kind of cards were being 
used by the common people, for painted cards were used by royalty 
long after printing began. The earliest cards extant—some printed, 
some painted, some printed in outline and filled in with a stencil, 
also shed little light on the question, for they cannot be dated. They 
indicate merely that cards were being made in several different ways, 
presumably at the same time, according to quality and price. Printing 
in its beginnings—whether of pictures, texts or cards—was always the 
poor man’s friend. 

18. In 1441 the Council of Venice issued the following decree: 

“Whereas, the art and mystery of making cards and printed figures, 
which is in use at Venice, has fallen to decay, and this in consequence 
of the great quantity of printed playing cards and colored figures 
which are made out of Venice, to which evil it is necessary to apply 
some remedy, in order that the said artists, who are a great many in 
family, may find encouragement rather than foreigners: Let it be 
ordained and established, according to the petition that the said 
masters have supplicated, that from this time in future, no work of 
the said art that is printed or painted on cloth or paper—that is to 
say, altar-pieces, or images, or playing cards, or any other thing that 
may be made by the said art, either by painting or by printing—shall 
be allowed to be brought or imported into this city.” 

19. From the decree of 1441 several things are evident, first, that at 
some considerable time before 1441 the printing of playing cards had 
been a thriving industry in Venice; second, that both printed and 
painted cards coming from some other place had interfered with that 
industry; and, third, that the printing of playing cards and the print- 
ing of saint images were closely connected. The source of these 
imported cards is indicated by an entry in the Red Book of Ulm in 
southern Germany, according to which, at just about this time playing 
cards were being shipped in barrels to Sicily and Italy. The city 
records of Augsburg and Nuremberg mention card makers in 1418, 
1420, 1433, 1435, and 1438. These cities are known to have been the 


246 NOTES 


places where the early saint pictures were being made by block printing 
at just the same time. This, together with a careful study of the words 
used for card makers in the German records, has led practically all 
authorities on the subject to the conclusion that, from the time these 
records begin, some at least of the cards were printed. Certain investi- 
gators of the subject go much further. From the great number of 
cards burned at Rome in 1423, from the prohibition of workmen 
playing cards in 1397 (indicating cheap production), and from other 
evidence, they come to the conclusion that, from the time of the earliest 
records of cards in Europe, printed as well as stencilled and painted 
cards were used, and that the printing of cards preceded and paved 
the way for the printing of religious pictures. The evidence is incon- 
clusive. The best that can be said is that the printing of cards and the 
printing of religious pictures were closely connected, that they were 
often, if not always, carried on by the same persons, and that it is 
impossible to say which started earlier, the probability being that 
the two sorts of printing developed side by side at about the same time. 

20. A theory to the effect that cards were introduced directly from China 
and not through the Arabs, is recorded by Valére Zani, an Italian 
writer who died in 1696, in the following statement, “The Abbé 
Tressan (a French missionary to Palestine, 1618-1684) showed me when 
I was at Paris a pack of Chinese cards and told me that a Venetian 
was the first who brought cards from China to Venice, and that that 
city was the first place in Europe where they were known.” On what 
authority Tressan based his statement has not been discovered. 

21. See Covelluzo above (note 15). Some authorities point to Spain as 
the avenue by which cards entered Europe, noting the Arabic origin 
of the Spanish word naipes, as well as the Italian naib. It seems likely 
that cards entered by several avenues. 


CHAPTER XX 
THE PRINTING OF TEXTILES 


1. On account of the climate, no Indian textiles of early date have sur- 
vived, but it seems not unlikely that even the Egyptian prints dating 
from Roman times show Indian influence. These earliest prints from 
Egypt are on cotton. 


2. 


ies) 


co 


CHAPTER XIX 247 


For fuller description of the Japanese method, see G. A. Audsley, 
Ornamental Arts of Fapan, vol. 1, part II, pp. 7-9. If the negative 
printing process was used in connection with a mordant, the union be- 
tween dye and mordant was probably produced by steaming after the 
printing. In this Japanese process it was possible to apply several colors 
in one printing. In this case it was necessary that each unit of color 
be separated from the other colors by a cloison, an unprinted zone 
where wood was clamped against wood. Such unprinted zones seem 
to appear also in most if not all of the prints found in Central Asia. 


. R. Forrer, Die Kunst des Zeugdruckes, p. 8. 
. R. Forrer, Die Zeugdrucke der byzantischen, romanischen, gothischen 


und spatern Kunstepochen, pp. 11-13. These Egyptian prints are 
resist prints on cotton. 


. R. Forrer, Die Zeugdrucke der byzantischen, etc., pp. 13-14. The 


print from Arles is said by Forrer to be linen (?). It has a pale blue 
resist and is probably imported from Egypt. The Quedlinburg fabric 
is a pigment print and is said by Lessing (Fahrbuch der Preussischen 
Kunstsammlungen, 1, 120) to be Sassanian. 


. Kamesé (see Bibliography), pp. 4-5. Kameso gives reasons in detail 


why the dates on these textiles must have been a part of the original 
blocks, and also indicates extensive Japanese bibliography on the 
subject. 


. Stein, Serindia, see index, “Silk, printed.” Note especially the 


plates in vol. 4. It is impossible to determine exactly the dates of 
the Tun-huang fabrics. It is certain that they are all earlier than 
1000 and later than 500. They probably date in the main from the 
latter part of this period. 

The printed fabrics from Tun-huang in striking contrast to all the 
printing on paper from the same place, are entirely non-religious in 
character. Animal designs predominate, especially dogs, deer, and 
horses. There is no right and wrong side as in our prints, the dye 
having thoroughly penetrated the fabric. See chapter 6. 


. Cennino Cennini was born about 1372. He was a pupil of the 


painter Gaddi in Florence, from 1384 to 1396. The book containing 
this description is entitled Trattato della Pittura (see edition of Mi- 
lanesi, Florence, 1859). The description of textile printing is quoted 
in full in Forrer, Die Kunst des Zeugdruckes, pp. 11-15, and an abstract 
of it is given in Forrer, Die Zeugdrucke, etc., pp. 22-23. 


248 NOTES 


g. The earliest textile printer mentioned by name in Europe is Jan de 
Printere of Antwerp (1417), approximately contemporary with the 
earliest block printers on paper named in German records. Forrer, 
Die Zeugdrucke, etc., p. 22. 

10. The most remarkable of these is a picture found in a church at 
Enskirchen (but probably made at Cologne), usually called from the 
inscription that forms part of the design, Gloria Laus Deo. The 
picture is 30 by 27 cm. in size. It represents a number of angels 
engaged in praise. This picture is the nearest approach made by 
textile printing to the image prints on paper. It dates probably from 
early in the fifteenth century. Another early picture print is the 
famous printed hanging of Sitten. 

11. Aside from a few playing cards of uncertain date, the exceptions 
to this rule are very rare. There are no exceptions among the early 
block prints of Japan, of Turfan or of Egypt. There are, so far as 
I am aware, just three fragments of a non-religious character from 
Tun-huang, and almost none from Europe. 

12. For very much of the material contained in this chapter, the writer 
is indebted to conferences with Prof. Rudolf M. Riefstahl, of the 
University of New York, whose long and careful study of Oriental 
textiles is well known. The following additional note from Dr. Rief- 
stahl came too late to be incorporated in the body of the chapter: 

“The printing technique in Europe practised during the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries is different from the Oriental techniques, 
being one of carrying pigments with a vehicle on the fibre, while the 
Oriental techniques command also the better process of forming a 
pattern in a fabric by the use of dyes, penetrating the textile fibre 
by the resist or the mordant process. 

“Textile printing in Europe may originally go back to an Eastern 
influence that manifested itself during the Imperial Roman period or 
perhaps earlier. But the medieval European technique emerges from 
the late Roman technique and is certainly not influenced by the 
Chinese art of textile printing. 

“The Eastern techniques of resist dyeing and mordant dyeing for 
pattern producing became known in Europe only after the discovery 
of the sea route to the Indies. A Dutch painter by the name of Pieter 
Clock, living in the second half of the sixteenth century is said to have 
first used the resist dyeing process in Europe for the production of 


pb #4 


CHAPTER XX 249 


patterned fabrics. The Oriental techniques therefore cannot have 
been instrumental in bringing forward the invention of printing in 
Europe. 

“However, the practising of printing in China may have opened 
perspectives to European travellers for the use of block printing, that 
otherwise might have come about only later. 

“Tt is perfectly logical that textile pattern printing in the medieval 
process suggested not only the reproduction of textile repeat designs 
but also pictorial representation like the compositions in the famous 
printed hanging of Sitten (second half of fourteenth century). 

“Very often, however, the forthcoming of a germinating idea is 
held back by the slowness of human logic, and is, on the other hand, 
stimulated by an instructive example. Kaolin was since the times of 
the diluvium in the European soil. Nothing prevented potters from 
trying this clay for the purpose of pottery making. But kaolin was 
discovered and experimented with only after Chinese porcelain had 
created the desire for an improved resonant white and translucent 
form of ceramic ware. 

“In the same way Europeans might have found quite by themselves 
the use of the textile printing technique for the production of pictorial 
scenes for wallhangings and religious images on linen, later for the same 
on paper, and finally for providing those images with legends cut in 
the wooden block. But such a process was undoubtedly speeded up 
by a considerable number of priests, teachers and missionaries, having 
seen in China the use of religious images printed with the block process 
on paper. They might very likely have encouraged this use of an old 
established technique for a new purpose fitting admirably into the 
purposes of the church.” 


CHAPTER XXI 


BLOCK PRINTING IN EUROPE 


. For Venetian decree of 1441, see chapter 1g, note 18. 


There has been a tendency in recent years among certain writers to 
minimize the importance of block printing as the forerunner of typog- 
raphy. These writers make much of the binder’s stamp and other 


250 NOTES 


devices that directly suggested type. But they prove merely that 
typography had two parents instead of one. Block printing suggested 
the idea that books could be printed. The binder’s stamp, etc., 
suggested a better way of doing it. 

3. The fact that most manuscript books—especially those that have 
been preserved—were made for the wealthy means that a large pro- 
portion of the books that are extant, even from the end of the four- 
teenth century, are still on parchment. Paper was used for more 
temporary and perishable things. 

4. T.L. De Vinne, The Invention of Printing, page 41. 

5. Acareful examination of the defects in certain of the early block books 
which indicate cracks in the blocks, shows that two pages were printed 
from each block, and that these pages were bound back to back. This 
conforms exactly to the Chinese practice. See De Vinne, The Invention 
of Printing, page 202. 

6. See chapter 20, note 13. 

7. At first sight it may seem strange that paper money did not feature 
in early European printing. It is the one form of Chinese printing 
that almost all European writers noticed. It is the one form which we 
know was carried on in Persia. Yet there is no record of any paper 
money in Europe till the issue of 1658 in Sweden. This is the more 
remarkable in view of the fact that Europe seems to have come just 
to the edge of the use of paper money and then stopped. In addition 
to the leather or fur money of Mongol Russia (see chapter 16, note 3), 
there are at least four issues of leather money recorded in Europe dur- 
ing the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Such leather money as 
guarantee for future payment was given out by (1) the Venetian Doge, 
Domenico Michieli, in the wars of 1122 to 1126; (2) King John of 
England during the Barons’ War; (3) Louis IX. of France during his 
imprisonment; (4) Emperor Frederick II. during the siege of Faénza in 
1240. It may well be that the complete failure of the issue of paper 
money in Persia and of those issues in China which took place during 
the time of most frequent European intercourse, proved a deterrent 
rather than an incentive to European imitation. (For a clear sum- 
mary of the issues of leather money in Europe, see A. L. von Eben- 
greuth, dl/gemeine Miinzkunde und Geldgeschichte, Munich and Berlin, 
1904, page 36.) 

8. See chapter 16, note 9. 


CHAPTER XXII 251 
CHAPTER XXII 
THE INVENTION OF MOVABLE TYPE IN CHINA 


1. “In the Tsin (Later Tsin) Dynasty, epoch T’ien-fu (936-943), there 


were copper plate books (hij AQ @¥).” Yo Ko (4% if), Sung 
Dynasty, in Chronology of the Nine Classics and the Three Commen- 
taries, as quoted in Tz’ #-yiian (BY Ji), section a page 27. 

“T saw in a relic shop pieces of bronze about two or three inches in 
length, and on them were cut poems of Tu Fu and prose quotations 
from the essays of Han Yu. The characters were reversed, so that I 
did not understand what these pieces of bronze were for. I was told 
that they were standards for printing and that they were distributed 
about the empire during the first year of the emperor T’ai Tsung of 
the Sung Dynasty (976).” Ts’ai Ch’éng ( #& Ye) in Chi-ch’ uang- 
ts’ ung-hua ($8 ai He an )> as quoted by Liu An, page 7. Liu An 
finds evidence that this bronze plate came from Szechuen. 

“During the period Ming-tao, the third year (1035), money was 
given out from the imperial treasury for the conversion of the hui-tzii 
notes, the copper plates were withdrawn and it was forbidden to print 
more.” Tx’ ii-yiian, section HG, page 27. 

Rohs ada de 

3. The statement is made by Julien that Pi Shéng was a smith. Julien’s 

reference to the section in Méng-ch’i-pi-t’'an is apparently incorrect 
and I have been unable to find the passage. 

4 JB Ve. 

. This seems to refer not to the thickness (1. e., height to paper) of the 
type as a whole, but rather to the thickness to which the type was cut 
away to make the character stand out. Hiille has suggested that 
this sentence refers not to the type itself but to a type mould or matrix. 
There is nothing else in the passage to suggest that a mould was used. 

6. FE), yén, literally seal. 

7. The text reproduced by Julien reads shih-hui (G IR)> lime, and 

is so translated by him. The texts of 1631 and 1696, which are appar- 
ently the oldest now extant, read chih-hui (4& Jy), paper ashes. 


8. Probably a frame for dividing columns and margins. 


m- 


252 NOTES 
g. Lit., ‘While the one form was being stamped and rubbed (Ep inl) pe 


This is the ordinary expression for printing, an expression recalling 
the fact that the impression is made by lightly rubbing with a brush, 
i as our word print in its origin suggests a press. 

. Lit., “for common characters like 7% and [J.” 

Tie This was the earlier method for arranging Chinese characters in a 
dictionary. In lieu of alphabetic order, which was manifestly impossi- 
ble in a non-alphabetic script, all words that rhymed were placed to- 
gether, and rules were devised for arranging the words within each 
rhyme group. It is upon this rhyme system that the new phonetic 
alphabet, whose introduction into all schools began in 1921, is based. 

12. Text of 1696 edition is here followed, as the 1631 reading, W JR, 
seems to have no meaning. 

13. Text of 1696 edition reads “his followers.” 

14. Shén Kua (7%, 5), Méng-ch i-pi-t’an (3s ES =e # i Chi-ku- 
ko (We tH Ae), edition of 1631, book 18, section g. The edition of 
1696 in the Pai-hai collection (vol. 4) has been compared, and, though 
there are six slight textual variations, none of them affect in any way 
the meaning, except the one in the last sentence, to which attention 
is called above (note 13). Julien has apparently used still a third 
text, which is practically identical with that of 1696, except for the 
use of /ime instead of paper ashes. The translation that I have given 
is from the text of the 1631 edition, though the 1696 edition, the 
French version of Julien and the German version of Hille have been 
carefully compared. The passage has apparently not previously been 
translated into English. 

15. A Korean writer of the latter part of the fifteenth century in a 
resumé of the history of movable type, contained in the preface of the 
Ch’én-chien-chai (Bi fi] FF) collection of poems (quoted by Kam- 
eso, page 128), says, “The movable type method was begun by 
Shén Kua and brought to perfection by Yang Wei-chung ( #B HE 
rh a The reference to Shén Kua is evidently an error due to con- 
fusion of the inventor with the one who first described the invention. 
Of Yang Wei-chung nothing further is known. Satow quoting from a 
ae book by Kondou, entitled Fy & fH Hi, refers to him as 


Yang K’¢ (55a): 


be eel 253 


16. Wang Chéng (= hi); Nung-shu ( =) Wu-ying-tien edition 
(zt oR RRS AN = is =), appendix. The Nung-shu was 
first published in 1314. By the reign of Ch’ien Lung (1736-1796), no 
copies of this original edition could be found. But fortunately it had 
been copied by hand in the great thesaurus of literature known as the 
Yung-lo-ta-tien during the reign of Yung Lo (1403-1425), and from 
this manuscript it was republished during Ch’ien Lung’s reign by the 
Wu-ying-tien printing office, and a Nung-shu of this edition is in the 
Library of Congress at Washington. (See W. T. Swingle in Report of 
the Library of Congress, 1921-1922, pp. 184-186.) The Nung-shu 
in the Bibliothéque Nationale at Paris is incomplete and lacks this 
appendix. A Ming Dynasty reprint of the Nung-shu has apparently 
been located in a library in Nanking, which is also incomplete. Liu 
An has reproduced the text of the Wu-ying-tien edition, though with 
a number of misprints, in Chung-kuo-tiao-pen-y tian-liu-k’ao, pp. 40-43. 
The translation here given is from the original Wu-ying-tien edition at 
Washington. 

17. This was the generally accepted view of those Sung Dynasty writers 
who disregarded the earlier Buddhist printing. See chapter 8. 

18. The reading SS, cash, is a misprint in Liu An. The Wu-ying-tien 


edition has correctly Sah, iron. 

19. AS Toe Shén Kua’s account called this a mixture of pine resin, 
wax and paper ashes. 

20. $e FF. 

21. The correct reading is not oat ink (as in Liu An), but IK, wood. 
It will be noted that this paragraph contains a summary of the whole 
description. The next paragraph goes back to the beginning and 
gives the description in detail. 

22. Lit., “for the auxiliaries 7%, 4, F§ and {{J.” These are among 
the words most commonly met in Chinese writings. 

23. The word translated revolving table here and throughout the passage 
is ike, lun (lit. wheel). The words translated /eg of the table are igs ith, 
lun-chou (lit. axle of the wheel). This arrangement for setting type 
called the wheel was evidently a round table, revolving upon a central 
leg, the top being divided into compartments and sub-compartments 
for the large number of type needed in a non-alphabetic script. This 


264 _ NOTES 


sort of “lazy-Susan”’ would seem to be somewhat of an improvement 
on the modern system of Chinese type-setting, where the compositor 
has to walk about an entire room to find the requisite type. 

24. FA, chiu (lit. mortar). 

25. $F tsuan (lit. augur or drill). 

26. See chapter 5. Once the type is set, the process seems not to differ 
materially from that of block printing. 

27. IRR 5K, Asien-chih. This was the hsien-chih of the magistracy of 
Ching-té (Fe {i ) in the district of Hstian-chou (B pI ). 

28. Late survivals of movable type of clay in Korea and Japan would 
seem to indicate that the process may have had more vogue than 
literary references would lead one to suppose. See M. Courant, 
Bibliographie coréenne, introd., p. 49. 

29. “In a Sung edition of the Mao-shih (the Book of Poetry with Com- 
mentary by Mao), in the section entitled JA¥ Jil, the character A 
appears lying on its side, which is proof of the fact that the book was 
printed with movable type.” Comment in the T’ien-lu-lin-lang 
(K jek BK Hi), as quoted by Liu An, page 39. The T’ien-/u-lin- 
lang was a collection that appeared in the year 1775 of works of the 
Sung, Yiian and Ming Dynasties. Additions were made to it in 1797. 

30. The last paragraph of Wang Chéng’s account would indicate that 
his special method of using wooden type was not found altogether 
practical. This does not apply to the use of wooden type in general. 

31. A few of these type present a further difference. They are reversible. 
One word is cut in the top and another in the bottom of the same type. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


THE GREAT EXPANSION OF MOVABLE TYPE 
PRINTING IN KOREA 
1. fe 
2. Kao-li-shih ey EE Hp), section entitled Pai-kuan-chih (4 fs 
ths as quoted by Kameso, page 127. 
3. This statement is contained in a photograph copy in the Preussische 
Staatsbibliothek of an anonymous Japanese document, accompanied 
by a German translation by the Korean interpreter Yi Djung Sun, 


CHAPTER XXIII 266 


which was sent from Korea with some Korean printed books that 
were on exhibition at the Bugra Exposition in Leipsic in 1914. This 
statement is probably based on Yi Kyoobo, a Korean writer who lived 
from 1169 to 1241, and who, according to Dr. J. S. Gale of Seoul, 
described movable type. I have been unable to obtain access to Yi 
Kyoobo’s work. It seems improbable that the type which he de- 
scribed were of metal. 

4. The book in question is The Family Sayings of Confucius (FL - 
Bx zB), British Museum, No. 15201, C 13. It has been the occa- 
sion of considerable controversy. Satow, who presented the book 
to the British Museum, makes out a strong case for its having been 
actually printed with movable type, partly in 1317 and partly in 1324. 
Later writers have largely taken the opposite position. See: 

Ernest Satow, On the Early History of Printing in Fapan, Transac- 
tions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 1882, page 62. 

Maurice Courant, Bibliographie coréenne, pp. xlvii—xlvili, 148- 
149. 

W. E. Griffis: Corea, the Hermit Nation, page 67. 

Le royaume solitaire. Revue des Deux Mondes, Feb. 15, 1884, 
page 894. 

5. The statement in the article on Typography in the Encyclopedia 
Britannica (Eleventh edition) to the effect that there is a book in the 
British Museum printed with type in Korea in 1337, is not correct. 
It is probably a misprint for 1317 and refers to the book mentioned 
above (note 4). 

6. The more readily understood English word “preface” is used in this 
chapter, though the “preface” in these Korean works appears at the 
end of the book, and is hence called by some writers, “postface.” 

7. Annals of the Yi Dynasty, chapter 3 (from German translation of 
Stiibe). 

8. According to Stiibe (page 93, see Bibliography), a further contempo- 
rary reference to this first font is contained in a laudatory statement 
by the Korean scholar, Kwon Geun (died 1409), ascribing to the king 
all honor for the invention. 

g. Sun-tzit-shih-t-chia-chu (f% ~ + — KR at). 

10. The first year (1403) of Yung Lo, emperor of China, was the same 
as the third year of T’ai Tsung, king of Korea. 


256 NOTES 


it. According to Stiibe (page 92), this much of the preface—the king’s 
proclamation—also appears in the Korean Encyclopedia, chapter 242. 

12. The translation is that of Satow, revised by comparison with the 
Chinese text as given by Kameso, page 127. 

13. Evidently a mistake for Pi Shéng. The man who first described the 
invention has been confused with the inventor. Of Yang Wei-chung 
(AB ME rp ) nothing further is known. He is called Yang K’é 
(A he) by Satow in a translation of this same passage from a 


Japanese work by Koudou, entitled 4G Xx fy A (Satow, p. 64). 

14. Preface to the Ch’én-chien-chat ( Bie fii Wie ) collection of poems, 
edition published in Korea with movable type. From text of Kameso, 
page 128. 

15. M. Courant, Bibliographie coréenne, p. 45. 

16. It is possible that there was a second font between 1403 and 1420. 
In the preface of the Korean edition of the History of the Earlier Han 
Dynasty, there is the statement: “In the eleventh month of 1413 
the king ordered his officer Li Tsang (2s iG ) to cast a fresh set of 
type, which was finished within the space of seven months.” There is 
however some confusion about dates, and it seems likely that this 
font was identical with the one described below under 1420. The 
museum at Seoul has type which they claim belong to a font of 1416. 

17. The first preface of this book is identical with the preface of the 
books published in 1409 and 1434 and has already been translated (see 
above). 

18. Li-tai-chiang-chien-po-t ( Fe Xu, HS Re TH at ) 

19. Satow’s translation. Owing to the confusion of Korean orthography, 
Chinese romanization (Giles) has been substituted for Satow’s Korean 
spelling in this and other quotations. 

20. Third preface of the Li-tai-chiang-chien-po-i (see above, notes 18 
and 19). The preface is dated December, 1436, and the book itself 
September, 1437. The two previous prefaces of the same book are 
translated above. Courant makes the statement (introduction, page 
45, authority not given) that this font of 1434 was made of lead. 

21. This statement that a book was produced in 1434 in Korean alpha- 
bet and movable type is contained in Courant’s Bibliographie coréenne. 
The book is numbered by him 253 and romanized, Sam kang haing 
sil to. 


CHAPTER XXIII 257 


22. There is another kind of early Korean type-printing consisting of 
very roughly printed books, and there is a tradition among Korean 
scholars that they were printed from type of baked clay, a survival 
of Pi Shéng’s method. Such clay type also survived to a late period 
in Japan. See Courant, introduction, page 49. 

23. T.L. De Vinne, The Invention of Printing, New York, 1876, pp.67-68. 

24. There is a theory held by many recent investigators that the earliest 
type made by Gutenberg at Mainz were also made from wooden 
models and sand or clay moulds. For discussion of this theory see 
Encyclopedia Britannica, art. Typography, pp. 536-538. 

25. From German translation of Stiibe, page 93. The romanization of 
the name of the author is Stiibe’s. 

26. These type were obtained by the Museum of Natural History from 
Homer B. Hulbert (author of The History of Korea). They are de- 
scribed by Mr. Hulbert in an article in Harper’s Magazine (June, 1899, 
vol. 99, pp. 102-108). In answer to a question addressed to Mr. Hul- 
bert with regard to the provenance of these type, I have received the 
following reply: “Among the archives of the Educational Department 
in Seoul in 1897 I found the remnants of all three of these issues [the 
three issues of the first half of the fifteenth century]. Of the oldest 
set there were only fifty-three pieces left, and these are the ones 
which the Minister of Education gave me and which I placed in the 
Natural History Museum. There is no actual prima facie evidence 
that these are the actual first pieces made, but all the circumstantial 
evidence points to this fact.” The curators of the Seoul Museum, to 
whom I sent impressions of the New York type for comparison (1924), 
very kindly returned to me impressions of the type of 1403, 1416, 
1420, and 1434, which are in their possession, and also of those of 
later date, and came to the conclusion on the basis of their examination 
that the type in New York probably belong to one of the fonts that 
were cast at the end of the eighteenth century. The whole question 
of the dating of Korean type now extant in museums needs further 
investigation. 

27. There were books printed in Japan shortly before this date by 
Jesuit missionaries, and the question has been raised whether these 
thirty-three years of typographic activity in Japan were not due to 
European influence. But an examination of the books themselves 
leads to the belief that the European influence if any was small. 


258 NOTES 


28. ae KK, also known as Hua Wen-hui (Ss y JE ) or Hua Hui- 
vung (#8 @ iif). 

29. ft $F, in the province of Kiangsu. 

30. The earliest mention of this printing activity of Wusih is in the 
Shuo-fu (FR Fh ) collection of reprints, in a passage to which the 
date of 1496 has been assigned by Kameso: “Recently in Hsi-shan 
(gh ily) in the establishment of Hua Hui-t’ung, printing has been 
done from movable type of bronze, and a large number of works have 
there been published.” (From text as quoted by Kameso, pp. 125- 
126). 

The Tz i-yiian gives the date of Hua Sui’s printing as the Hung-chih 
period (1488-1506). 

There was another famous printer at Wusih by the name of An Kuo 
( te ed), dated by the Tz’#-yiian as during the Chia-ching period 
(1522-1567). Liu An (pp. 43-45) and Yeh Té-hut (8:5-12) quote 
most of the available sources, especially those from local histories, 
relating to Hua Sui and An Kuo, and discuss certain books which 
are still extant and for which the claim is made that they are the work 
of these printers. 

31. “Recently in Pi-ling ( Fe we ney Nanking ) bronze and lead have 
been used for the making of movable type, the use of which is much 
more convenient than printing from blocks. But in setting the type 
a large number of errors are made.”” Lu Shén ( Gs PR), Chin-t ai- 
chi-wén (+ 2 A fy), as quoted in Kameso, p. 126. Lu Shén 
lived from 1477 to 1544 (Giles, Biog. Dict., No. 1427). Kameso dates 
this book as having been written in 1505. 

32. A. Forke, Mé Ti, Berlin, 1923, introduction, page 8. 

33. In Macao. During the following century the Jesuit missionaries did 
a great deal of printing both in Chinese and in Latin, sometimes by 
Chinese methods and sometimes by European and sometimes by 
combinations of the two. 

34. The Szi-k’u-ch’ tian-shu ( py jt > #). 

35. Kames6, p. 126. 

36. Courant, introduction, page 47. 

37. The number of Chinese characters in use has to be multiplied by the 
average number of pronunciations of the same character—which are 


— 


CHAPTER XXIII 259 


represented by different combinations of phonetic symbols alongside 
the character. This renders the Japanese font even more cumbersome 
than the Chinese. 


CHAPTER XXIV 
THE PEDIGREE OF GUTENBERG’S INVENTION 


. There is no need here to go into the merits of the Gutenberg-Coster 


controversy. The name Gutenberg is here used to denote the inventor 
of printing, because that is the more generally accepted view. For 
a clear exposition of the opposite view the reader is referred to the 
article on typography in the Encyclopedia Britannica (Eleventh 
edition). 


. Aclear popular account of the European background of typography 


is found in The Invention of Printing by T. L. De Vinne (New York, 
1876). A more up-to-date account, emphasizing especially book- 
binders’ metal stamps, copper-plate engraving, and other work in 
metal is found in Festschrift zum Fiinfhundertjahrigen Geburtstage von 
Fohann Gutenberg, edited by Otto Hartwig (Mainz, 1900), pp. 25-64. 


. The statement of Jovius written in 1550 (see chapter 16, note g) is 


the nearest approach to early direct evidence of the transmission of 
typography from China. It seems unwise to overstress the authority 
of this quotation, especially in relation to typography. The phrases 
“artifices typographos” and “more nostro” may easily be loosely used. 
Though it is true that metal type, as used in Korea, were introduced 
into China just before the first Portuguese visits (see chapter 23), it 
is more probable that Jovius’ reference is to block printing. 

A recent writer, Pierre Gusman (La gravure sur bois et d’épargne 
sur métal, Paris, 1916, pp. 37, 38) has proposed two other possible 
theories to account for the transference of typography from the Far 
East. One is that it was brought by way of Russia and learned by 
Gutenberg during his supposed stay in Prague. The second is that it 
was brought into Europe by a company of Armenians, who had (sup- 
posedly) earlier been in contact with the Uigurs, and who were later 
living in Holland in the time of Coster. Neither theory seems con- 
vincing. 

Should the version of the Coster story, according to which Coster 


260 NOTES 


first printed with wooden type sawed from a block, prove true, it 
would add a certain presumption in favor of connection with the type 
described by Wang Chéng and found by Pelliot. But recent investt- 
gations have tended rather to discredit this part at least of the Coster 
theory. 

Until further and more convincing evidence can be found, the ques- 
tion will have to remain an open one, with the presumption against any 
connection of European typography with China other than through 
the indirect channels enumerated later in this chapter—through the 
invention of paper and through block printing. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


‘ 
a? 





‘ 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Where the same work is cited more than once, the full title is usually 
given in connection with the first citation only. 


CHAPTER I 


4% WR GE (Hou-Han-shu, History of the Later Han Dynasty). c. 


A.D. 470. Book (AR) 180, section 68, sub-section entitled B& fay (sh 
BE AE KR (T'u-shu-chi-ch’ éng). Published 1726. Book 24, sec- 
tions 1§2-1$3. 
kK BH cas) JRA (Ko-chih-ching-yiian). Published 1735. Book 37, folios 
7-18, 
The T’u-shu-chi-ch’éng and Ko-chih-ching-yiian are usually known as encyclopedias. They are more 
properly source books, consisting of quotations from earlier works, classified by subject. Those 


desiring to pursue any subject further will find in these books much of the Chinese bibliography 
needed, though lacking the ordinary citations of chapter and page. 


Corpier, Henri: Bibliotheca Sinica. Paris, 1904-1908. Page 1547, 
Papier. This is a full bibliography of books and articles in European 
languages on the subject up to the date of writing. See also supple- 
ment (Paris, 1920). 

Biancuet, Aucustin: Essai su histoire du papier. Paris, tg00. Pp. 
I-18. 

Cuavannes, Epouarp: Les livres chinois avant linvention du papier. 
Journal Asiatique, 1905. Series 10, vol. 5, pp. 1-75. 

Hirtu, Friepricu: Chinese Studies. Shanghai, 1882. Vol. 1, pp. 206 ff. 

STEIN, Sir M. Avrev: Serindia. London, 1921. Index, Paper. See also 
plates in vol. 4. 

Hoern te, A. F. R.: Who was the Inventor of Rag Paper? Journal of the 
Royal Asiatic Society, 1903. Pp. 663 ff. 

Wiesner, J.: Ein neuer Beitrag zur Geschichte des Papiers. Sitzungs- 
berichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil. Hist. 
Klasse, Vienna, 1904. Vol. 148, part 6. 

Wiesner, J.: Ueber die dltesten bis jetzt gefundenen Hadernpapiere. Ibid, 
Vienna, 1911. Vol. 168, part 5. 


264 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


CHAPTER II 


Fe vl 2 (Cuu Hstanc-usien): FI] Hi. (Yin-tien). Ming Dynasty 
(1368-1644). A careful and critical study of the history of seals from 
the Ts’in dynasty to that of Ming. 

= FS Rp (Wo-cw’1v Yen): A TE hy (Hsiieh-ku-pien). Yiian 
Dynasty (1280-1368). 

T’u-shu-chi-ch éng (see above). Book 32 (¥ aE HfL), sections I4I- 
142 (Ht Ell Bf). 

Ko-chih-ching-y tian (see above). Book 40, fol. 1-4 and 6-7. 

BY YR (Te i-yiian) Encyclopedia. Shanghai, Commercial Press, 1914. 
Articles Bt, 38 YE, FI), etc. 

De Groot, J. M. M.: The Religious System of China. Leyden, 1892- 
1894. Vol. 6, pp. 1033-1052 (Taoist charm seals). 

STEIN: Serindia (see above). Index, Seals, Seal impressions. See also 
many plates of seals in vol. 4. 

The bibliography on seals in Chinese is very voluminous. Only the sources which the writer has used 


and found specially valuable are here listed. Additional bibliography may be found in the references 
cited in Chinese encyclopedias. 


CHAPTERS 


Ko-chih-ching-y tian (see above). Book 39, folios 6-14. 

STEIN: Serindia (see above). Index, Rubbing. 

Juien, Sranisias: Documents sur Part d’imprimer a Paide de planches 
au bots, de planches au pierre et de types mobiles. Journal Asiatique, 
1847. Series 4, vol. 9, pp. 508-518. 

HE fii jen Yeu Té£-nu1): a IK cl ab (Shu-lin-ch ing-hua). 
Kuan-ku-t’ang Publishing Co., 1911. Edition of 1920. Book (chiian) 
I, folios 22-23. 


CHAPTER IV 


CLENNELL, W. J.: The Historical Development of Religion in China. 
London, 1914. Pp. g1-1I0. 

BusHELL, S. W.: Chinese Art. London, 1906. Vol. 2, pp. 124-130. 

Watey, ArtHuR: An Introduction to the Study of Chinese Painting. 
London, 1923. Pp. 77-136. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 265 
CHAPTER V 


INK 
T’u-shu-chi-ch éng (see above). Book 24, folios 149-151. 
Ko-chih-ching-y tian (see above). Book 37, folios 20-30. 
Tx ii-yuan (see above). Article Fs 
Juiten, Sranisias, and Cuampion, P.: Industries anciennes et mo- 
dernes de Empire chinois. Paris, 1869. Pp. 129-140. 
Davis, Joun F.: China. London, 1857. Vol. 2, pp. 176-177. 


A study of the history of ink in China and the Far East by Berthold Laufer will be published, probably 
in 1925, as part of a work on the history of printer's ink, to be edited by F'. B. Wiborg of New York. 


TECHNIQUE OF BLOCK PRINTING 
Davis, Joun F,: China. London, 1857. Vol. 2, page 180. 


CHAPTER VI 


PROTO-PRINTING IN BUDDHIST MONASTERIES 


Srein: Serindia (see above). Index, Stencil, Pounce, Stamp, Silk, 
printed, etc. 


QUESTION OF BLOCK PRINTING IN 593 


ya Fe fe (Fer Cu’anc-ranc): iy cA os af a0, (Li-tai-san-pao- 
chi). Tripitaka, Kyoto edition, f’a40 30, vol. 7, chap. 15, fol. 666. 

Ke YE (Lu Suéy): He PY BR (Ven-hsien-lu). 

Ko-chih-ching-yiian (see above). Book 39, fol. 2. 

Juuten, Sranisias: Documents sur Part, etc. (see above). Journal 
Asiatique, 1847. Pp. 505-507. 

Warey, Artuur: Note on the Invention of Woodcuts. New China 
Review, 1919. 

BY ff 4 = (Asaxura Kameso): A AR Fl BB (Aistory 
of Early Printing in Japan). Tokyo, 1999, privately printed. 
Ppl 3 

You Te a0 (see above). Book 1, folios 19-20. 


266 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
CHAPTER VII 


By sy Aly =. (Asakura Kames6). See above. Pp. 6-14. 

SaTow, Sir Ernest: On the Early History of Printing in Ffapan. Trans- 
actions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 1882. Vol. 10, pp. 48-83. 
Same volume, pp. 252-259. 

Hore, Hermann: Ueber den alten chinesischen Typendruck und seine 
Entwickelung in den Landern des Fernen Ostens. Berlin, 1923. Page 3. 

Sporry, Hans: Das Stempelwesen in Fapan. Zurich, 1901. (A pamphlet 
containing much about the early history of seals in Japan.) 

Encycropepia Brirannica. Eleventh edition. Article Typography. 

Mourvocn, James: 4 History of Fapan. Vol. 1, chapters 5-7 (for his- 
torical setting). 

CHAPTER VIII 


BLOCK PRINTS FOUND AT TUN-HUANG 


STEIN: Serindia (see above). Vol. 2, pp. 822, 845, 893, 918; vol. 4, 
plates 99-102. 

PeLuioT, Paut: Une bibliothéque médiévale retrouvée au Kan Sou. 
Bulletin de Ecole Francaise d’Extréme Orient, 1908. Vol. 8, pp. 
bee ee Se 

Binyon, Laurence: Catalogue of Fapanese and Chinese Woodcuts in 
the British Museum. London, 1916. Pp. 576-581. 


EARLIEST LITERARY REFERENCES 
Ko-chih-ching-y tian (see above). Book 39, fol. 1-3. 


Ba oe (Liv An): FP BY BE A Ue GE FE (History of Chinese 
Printing). Shanghai, Commercial Press, 1916. Pp. 1-3. 

Curzon, Rosert: Printing in China and Europe. Miscellanies of the 
Philobiblon Society. London, 1860. Vol. 6, pp. 1-33. 

Watery, Artuur: Note on the Invention of Woodcuts. New China 
Review. Ig1g. 

Yeu T&-nu1 (see above). Book 1, folios 18-19. 


CHAPTER IX 
E BA HE (Wanc Kuo-wen): FL (GU BE ARF (4 Study of the 


Printing of the National Academy during the Five Dynasties). ad Ee 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 267 


= Fj (Journal of Sinological Studies). Peking, January, 1923. Pp. 
139-145. (This is a careful collection of source material on the printing 
of the period under consideration.) 

8] As (Liu An). See above. Pp. 3-6. 

Yeu T£-nut1 (see above). Book 1, folios 20-22. 

KaprotH, Jutes: Lettre a M. le Baron A. de Humboldt sur Pinvention 
de la boussole. Paris, 1834. Pp. 128-130. 

Curzon, R.: Printing in China and Europe. Miscellanies of the Philo- 
biblon Society. London, 1860. Vol. 6, pp. 1-33. 

Torrance, T.: The History of Szechuen during the Epoch of the Five 
Dynasties. West China Missionary News, Ch’eng-tu, May, Igrg. 
Vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 28-37. (See also article by same writer entitled, 
Szechuen during the T’ang Dynasty, same magazine, August, 1918, 


Pp- 21-35-) 
CHAPTER X 
ay Ae (Liu An). See above. Pp. 6-39, 51-53. 


SwincLe, WALTER T.: Orientalia: Acquisitions. Report of the Librarian 
of Congress, Washington, 1923. Pp. 174-179. 

Satow, Sir Ernest: On the Early History of Printing in Fapan. Trans- 
actions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 1882. Vol. 10, pp. 48-83. 
Also p. 257. 

HY y= eet = (Asakura Kameso). See above. Pp. 22 ff. 

Pe.uiot, Pau: Les documents chinois trouvés par la Mission Koslov a 
Khara-khoto. Journal Asiatique, 1914. Series 2, vol. 3, pp. 503-518. 

Yeu Tf-nut (see above). Books 2-10. (A full and scholarly study of the 
printing of the Sung, Yuan and early Ming Dynasties.) 


CHAPTER XI 


vig GR (Ma Tuay-uiy): 3 kek i  (Wen-hsien-t ung-k ao), 
c. 1319. The more important parts bearing on the subject are quoted, 
with Chinese text and English translation, in Vissering (see below). 

VissERING, WILLEM: On Chinese Currency, Coin and Paper Money. 
Leiden, 1877. Pp. 160-218. 

Kviaprotu, Jutes: Sur lorigine du papier monnaie. In Mémoires 


268 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


rélatifs a ! Asie, by Jules Klaproth, vol. 1, pp. 375-388. Also pub- 
lished separately. 

Morse, H. B.: Currency in China. Journal Royal Asiatic Society, China 
Branch, 1907. Vol. 38, pp. 17-31. 

SABURO, S.: The Origin of Paper Currency. Journal of Peking Oriental 
Society, 1889. Vol. 2, pp. 265-307. 

BusHe tL, S. W.: Specimens of Ancient Chinese Paper Money. Ibid., 
pp- 308-316. 

Anon.: Paper Money among the Chinese. Chinese Repository, 1851. 
Vol. 20, pp. 289-296. 

Yuve, Sir Henry: The Book of Ser Marco Polo. Third edition, revised 
by Henri Cordier, London, 1903. Vol. 1, pp. 423-430. 

Yuve, Sir Henry: Cathay and the Way Thither. New edition, revised by 
Henri Cordier, London, 1913-1916. Vol. 2, pp. 195-198; vol. 3, pp. 
148-150; vol. 4, pp. 112-113. 


To this list should be added a recent Chinese work on early banknotes, with plates, by the well-known 


scholar, Lo Chen-yii (4E tre =k) C 


CHAPTER XII 


Hirty, Frrepricu: China and the Roman Orient: Researches into their 
ancient and mediaeval relations as represented in old Chinese records. 
Shanghai, 1885. 

Hermann, Arsert: Die alten Seidenstrassen zwischen China and Syria. 
Berlin, 1gio. 

BRETSCHNEIDER, Emit: Mediaeval Researches from Eastern Asiatic 
Sources. London, 1888. 2 vols. 

Laurer, BertHoup: Sino-Iranica: Chinese contributions to the history of 
civilization in ancient Iran, with special reference to the history of culti- 
vated plants and products. Chicago, 1919. 

Beaztey, C. Raymonp: Dawn of Modern Geography. London, 1897- 
1906. Vol. 1, chap. 5. 

Yuve, Sir Henry: Cathay and the Way Thither. Cordier edition. Lon- 
don, 1913-1916. 4 vols. 

Hirtu, Frrepricu, and Rockuitx, W. W.: Chau Fu-kua, his Work on the 
Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. St. 
Petersburg, IgII. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 269 
CHAPTER XIII 


Biancuet, Aucustin: Essai sur [histoire du papier. Paris, 1goo. (An 
excellent summary of the whole history, but written before recent ex- 
cavations in Turkestan.) 

WE Ls, H. G.: The Outline of History. New York, 1921. Pp. 603, 717- 
718. 

EncyciopepiA Brirannica. Article Paper. 

Conrapy, A.: Die Chinesischen Handschriften und Kleinfunde Sven 
Hedins in Loulan. Stockholm, 1920. 

StreIn: Serindia (see above). Index, Paper. 

Konow, STEN: Orken og Oase. Kristiania, 1912. 

ZATURPANSKIJ, CHoros: Reisewege und Ergebnisse der deutschen Turfan- 
expeditionen. Orientalisches Archiv, 1913. Vol. 3, pp. 116-127. 

KarABACEK, J.: Mitteilungen aus der Sammlung des Erzherzog Rainer. 

KarasackEk, J.: Das Arabische Papier. Vienna, 1887. 

KaraBaceKk, J.: Neue Quellen zur Papiergeschichte. Vienna, 1888. 

KaraBackk, J.: Papyrus Erzherzog Raineri: Fiihrer durch die Ausstel- 
lung. Vienna, 1894. 

GrouMANN, Apotr: Corpus Papyrorum Raineri III. Series Arabica, I, 1. 
Allgemeine Einfiihrung in die Arabischen Papyri. Vienna, 1925. (In 
preparation.) 


For works on history of paper in China, see Bibliography of chapter one. For works on the introduc- 
tion of paper to Europe, see Bibliography in Encyclopedia Britannica. 


GHAPTER XIV 


Almost nothing has been written concerning the block printing of Turfan, The material for this chap- 
ter has been gained from personal observation of the block prints in the Museum fiir V olkerkunde 
at Berlin, and from conversation with Dr. von Le Coq who discovered them. The following general 
articles contain an account of the Turfan discoveries as a whole. The first of them contains in its 
footnotes references to many monographs on various phases of the Turfan discoveries. The reader 
is also referred to other publications of Dr. von Le Coq and Dr. Griinwedel. 


ZATURPANSKIJ, CHoros: Reisewege und Ergebnisse der deutschen Turfan- 
expeditionen. Orientalisches Archiv, 1913. Vol. 3, pp. 116-127. 

von Le Cog, AtBert: Origin, Fourney and Results of the First Royal 
Prussian Expedition to Turfan. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 
1909. Pp. 299-323. 

von Le Coa, Atsert: Exploration archéologique a Tourfan. Journal 
Asiatique, 190g. Series 10, vol. 14, pp. 321-342. 


270 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
CHAPTER XV 


GENERAL VIEW OF EARLY RELATIONS BETWEEN ISLAM 
AND CHINA 


Broomuatt, Marsuari: Islam in China. London, Igto. Pp. 1-108. 

FERRAND, GaBRIEL: Voyages du marchand Sulayman en 851, suivi de 
remarques par Abii Zayd Hasan (vers 916). Les Classiques de l’Orient, 
vol. 7. Paris, 1922. 

Hirtu, Frrepricn, and Rocxuity, W. W.: Chau Fu-kua (see above). 

YuLe: Cathay and the Way Thither (see above). Vol. 1, sections 56-59, 
77-87; vol. 4, pp. 1-166. 

Beaztey, C. Raymonp: The Dawn of Modern Geography. London, 
1897. Vol. 1, chap. 7. 


ARABIC PREJUDICE AGAINST PRINTING 


KaRABACEK, J.: Papyrus Erzherzog Raineri: Fiihrer durch die Aus- 
stellung. Vienna, 1894. Pp. 248-249. 


CHAPTER XVI 


Encyctopepia Brirannica. Eleventh edition. Article China. Vol. 6, 
pp. 189-191. (An excellent summary.) 

Howorrn, Henry H.: History of the Mongols. London, 1888. Parts I. 
and II. 

Corner, Henri: Histoire de Chine. Paris, 1920. Vol. 2, pp. 369-432. 

Yue: Cathay and the Way Thither (see above). Vol. 1, sections 88-107. 

Beaziey, C. Raymonp: Dawn of Modern Geography. London, 1901. 
Volia;‘chap. 4: 

BRETSCHNEIDER, Emit: Mediaeval Researches. 2 vols. (see above). 

Beaziey, C. Raymonp: The Texts and Versions of Fohn de Plano Car- 
pint and William de Rubruquis. London, 1903. 

Yute, Sir Henry: The Book of Ser Marco Polo. Third edition, revised by 
H. Cordier, London, 1903. 2 vols. 

Pe.uiot, Paut: Les Mongols et la Papauté. Revue de l’Orient Chrétien, 
1922-1923. Series 3, vol. 3 (23), nos. 1 and 2, pp. 3-30. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 271 


CHAPTER XVII 


Howortn, Henry H.: History of the Mongols. London, 1888. Part III. 

Browne, Epwarp G.: Persian Literature under the Tartar Dominion. 
Cambridge, 1920. Pp. 3-104. 

Yue: Cathay and the Way Thither (see above). Vol. 3, pp. 108-133. 

Yue: The Book of Ser Marco Polo (see above). Vol. 1, pp. 74-76, 
428-429; vol. 2, pp. 466-478. 

Pe.uior, Paut: Les Mongols et la Papauté. Series of articles to be pub- 
lished in Revue de [Orient Chrétien. For list see Rev. de Or. Ch., 
series 3, vol. 3 (1922-1923), pp. 2-3. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


KarasaceKk, J.: Papyrus Erzherzog Raineri: Fiihrer durch die Ausstel- 
lung. Vienna, 1894. Pp. 247-250. 

GrouMAnn, ApoLr: Corpus Papyrorum Raineri III. Series Arabica, I, 
1. Allgemeine Einfiihrung in die Arabischen Papyri. Vienna, 1925. 
(In preparation.) 


CHAPTER XIX 


FOR CHINESE ORIGIN 
T’u-shu-chi-ch éng (see above). Book 807, section zh ply Hh, sub-sec- 


tion tii ja a. 


Tz’ ti-y tian (see above). Articles HE F- R and #& Fi. 
Wirxinson, W. H.: The Chinese Origin of Playing Cards. American 


Anthropologist, 1895. Vol. 8, pp. 61-78. 
Cuuin, Stewart: The Game of Ma-Fong, its Origin and Significance. 
Brooklyn Museum Quarterly, October, 1924. 


FOR HISTORY IN EUROPE 
Encyc.opepiA Britannica. Article Cards. 
De Vinne, THEeopore L.: The Invention of Printing. New York, 
1876. Pp. 88-108. 
Cuatro, Witiiam A.: Facts and Speculations on the Origin and History 
of Playing Cards. London, 1848. 


See also Bibliography in Encyclopedia Britannica, 


She BIBLIOGRAPHY 


CHAPTER XX 
ay yy $i = (Asakura Kames6). See above. Pp. 4-6. (This includes 


references to a number of other Japanese works on the subject.) 

Torr! SHuxo: T/lustrated Catalog of the Shoso-in Treasury at Nara. 
1908. English introduction. 

STEIN: Serindia (see above). Index, Si/k, printed. 

Forrer, R.: Die Kunst des Zeugdruckes. Strassburg, 1898. 

Forrer, R.: Die Zeugdrucke der byzantischen, romanischen, gothischen 
und spatern Kunstepochen. Strassburg, 1894. 

Baker, GeorcE P.: Calico Painting and Printing in the East Indies in 
the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. London, 1921. 


CHAPTER XXI 


See Bibliography in Encyclopedia Britannica. Article Typography. 
Eleventh edition, vol. 27, page 541. 


CHAPTER XXII 


WN, +e (SHin Kua): 3S WF =e Be (Méng-ch i-pi-tan). Between 
10S0 and 1093. Edition of 1631, book 18, section 9. 

F he (Wane Cuénc): BA BE (Nung-shu). 1314. Appendix of JR 
cr. fey BS YS We =F edition. 

oH a5 (Liu An). See above. Pp. 39-50. 

HE f#i ei (Yeu Té-n01) see above. Book 8, folios 1-5. 

Juien, Sranistas: Documents sur Tart, etc. (see above). Journal Asi- 
atique, 1847. Pp. 511-519. 

STUBE, R.: Die Erfindung des Druckes in China und seine Verbreitung in 
Ostasien. Beitrage zur Geschichte der Technik, 1918. Vol. 8, pp. 88 ff. 

Hire, Hermann: Ueber den alten chinesischen Typendruck (see above). 
Pp. 4-11. 

CHAPTER XXIII 


By y=) fle = (Asakura Kames6). See above. Pp. 125-128. 
Satow, Ernest: On the early History of Printing in Fapan. Transactions 
of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 1882. Vol. 10, pp. 48-83. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY Ohh) 


Satow, Ernest: Further Notes on Movable Types in Korea. Same vol- 
ume, pp. 252-250. 

Courant, Maurice: Bibliographie coréenne. Paris, 1895. Pp. 148- 
149. Also introduction, pp. xliii-lxi. 

STuBe, R.: Die Enfindung des Druckes in China und seine Verbreitung 
in Ostasien (see above). 

Hire, Hermann (see above). Pp. 11-15. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


See Bibliography in Encyclopedia Britannica. Article Typography. 
Eleventh edition, vol. 27, p. 541. 


WORKS FROM WHICH ILLUSTRATIONS HAVE BEEN 
REPRODUCED 


Grateful acknowledgement is made of the following works, from each 
of which one or more illustrations have been reproduced. 

ScHRAMM, ALBERT: Schreib- und Buchwesen einst und jetzt. Leipsic. 
No date. 

KaraBackK, J.: Papyrus Erzherzog Raineri: Fithrer durch die Ausstel- 
lung. Vienna, 1894. 

Yue, Sir Henry: The Book of Ser Marco Polo. Cordier edition. Lon- 
don, 1903. 

GusMAN, Pierre: La gravure sur bois et d’épargne sur métal du XIV" 
au XX°* siécle. Paris, 1916. 

STEIN, Sir M. Auret: Serindia. London, 1921. 

Pa 45 (Liv Ay): 4 BQ RE We Wa i FE (History of Chinese 


Printing). Shanghai, 1916. 





INDEX 





INDEX 


A 

Asu ZEYD, gI 

AGRICULTURE, Book of, 165, 166 

Aumep III, Sultan, 112 

AHMED TiGuUDAR, 127 

ALEXANDER THE GREAT, 8, 19 

Aw Tun (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus), 
86 

Anbrew, bishop of Zayton in Fukien, 
124 

AraBIA, 98, 231 

ARISTOPHANES, 89, 227 

AUGUSTINE, ST., 90 


B 


BACKGAMMON, 139, 229, 241 
Bacon, RoGER, 92, 236 
BanakArti (Garden of the Intelligent), 
131, 132, 189, 239, 240 
BANK NOTES, see Paper money 
BERNARD OF SIENNA, ST., 142 
Brack DEATH, 153 
Biock PRINTING, method, 26-27, 130, 
131 
significance of, 23-27 
Bronze TYPE, see Movable type 
BuppHIST CANON, see Tripitaka 


C 


Carns, see Playing cards 

Castra.pi oF FEttTRE, Pamfilio, 122 

CATHERINE II, 113 

Cauma, RaBBAN, 127 

Caves OF THE THOUSAND Buppuas, 
see Tun-huang 

Caxton, WILLIAM, IOI 


CENNINI, CENNINO, 148, 247 

Cuanc Cu’ IEn, 86, 226 

CHARMS, IO-II, 33, 36-37, 109, 119, 
T2se ace 37.00 38, Lal pe200r207, 
209, 223 

Cu’EN Cu’Il, 57 

CHENG-TzU-T’uNG (dictionary), 141, 
244 

CHESS, 139, 141, 229, 242, 244 

CHIO-NEN, 63 

Cuou Ju-Kua, 114 

CHRISTOPHER, ST., print, 142, 151 

Cuu Hs, 58 

Cuu I, 45 

Cuu YU, 93, 203 

Cuuanc Hsien Wana, 174 

CHUANG-T2U, 66 

Cray TyPE, see Movable type 

CoLUMBUS, 124 

Compass, xi, 55, 92, 93, 153, 161; 230 

Conrucian CLassics, cutting of in 
stone, 12-15, 212 

printing of, 45, 47, 50, 51, 52, 53, 

56, 60, 62, 64, 67, 71, 137, 159, 181, 
TOOL STI, 212"218 

CosMAs, 120, 121, 235 

Coup et, PHIL., xiii 


D 


Damascus, 98, 100, IOI, 121, 153, 154 

De Gama, Vasco, 125, 237 

De Provins, Guyot, 93 

De Rusruauis, WILLIAM, 76, 92, 120, 
T21, 22%, 232, 236, 236 

De Vinne, THEODORE L., 24, 175, 200, 
250, 257, 259 


278 


De Virry, Carp1nal, 93 

DESIGN PRINTING ON PAPER, 30 

Duaranl, vii, 35-38, 208, 209 

Diamonp Sutra, 14, 30, 32, 41, 42, 43, 
44, 45, 46, 63, 65, 66, 107, 181, 207- 
211, 221, 222 

Dice, 139, 140, 141, 229, 243 

Doxyo, 35 

DoMINoEs, 140, 243 


E 


EARTHENWARE TYPE, see Movable type 

EeyPr, xii, Xv, 17, 25, 99, 100, 109, IIo, 
129, 133-138, 146, 148, 149, 150, 153, 
155, 180, 185, 194, 201, 229, 241, 246, 
247, 248 

Ex-EprisI, 100, 231 


F 

Fan YEH, 3 

Féno Tao, 2, 14, 24, 26, 46, 47, 48, 49, 
50; 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 62, 63, 66, 69, 
71, 110, 136, 159, 160, 162, 181, 199, 
202, 203, 208, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 
Ohh LE 

“FLYING MONEY,” 70, 71, 80, 223 

FOLDED BOOK, 43, 108, 208, 209 

FRANCE, 88, 121, 126, 127, 141, 147, 
153, 185, 244, 245 


G 
GEMBO, 35 
Gencuis Kuan, see Jinghis Khan 
GERMANY, 116, 118, 141, 147, TSI pts3, 
185, 244, 245 
Guazan Kuan, 125, 129-130, 237, 239 
Giovio, PauLo, see Jovius, Paulus 
GREECE, 85 
GroHMann, ADOLF, 137, 190, 231, 233, 
240, 244 


INDEX 


GRUNWEDEL, 103 

GuNPOWDER, Xi, 55, 92, 143, 153, 229 

GUTENBERG, 17, 23, 24, 43, 53, 61, 69, 
76, 125, 129, 132, 136, Ist, 192, 1535 
1§5, 166 ,180, 182, 257, 259-260 


H 


Hair PEN, xiv, 2 

Han in CoLtece, 61 
Hartn-at-Rasuip, 98 

Henin, Sven, 96 

Hirtu, FRIEDRICH, xii, 227, 230, 233 
Hs1 Tsunc (Emperor), 44 
Hsien Tsunc (Emperor), 70, 223 
Hstan Ho, 140 

Hstan Tsane, 29, 193, 207, 220 
Hua Sut, 177, 258 

Hui Tsunc (Emperor), 73 
Hutacu, 126, 127 

Hite, Hermann, xiii, xiv, 252 
Hunc Wu (Emperor), 76, 80 
Huncary, 116, 118, 121 


I FAMILY, 58 

Isn Batura, 114, 225, 233 

Inn VaHas, gI 

IBRAHIM, I12 

ImacE prints (European), 142, 150- 
1$2, 155-156, 183, 246, 248, 249 

Inv1A, 78, 87, 90, 93, 103, 120, 128, 131, 
139, 145, 185, 190, 193, 207, 220, 226, 
227, 228, 231, 241, 242 

INK, 24, 25, 26, 154, 155, 181, 199- 
201 

Inscriptions, see Rubbings from stone 
inscriptions 

Iray, 88, 113, 129, 141, 142, PR ie KE 
185, 237, 245 


INDEX 


J 


JAPAN, I$, 17; 23; 24, 31, 32; 33-39» 41, 
47, 52, 62, 63, 64, 77, 86, 90, 104, 107, 
116, 136, 146, 147, 148, 149, 177, 179, 
IGT, 185, 206-207, 221,223, 243; 242. 
247, 248, 254, 255, 257 

Jincuis Kuan, 61, 65, 66, 75, 103, 106, 
110, 116, 117, 126, 169, 232, 233 

Jovius, Pautus, xiii, 120, 189, 234, 
235, 259 

JuLieN, STANISLAS, xiii, 198, 199, 20T, 
202, 204, 251, 252 

Justinian, 87 


K 


KARABACEK, 4, 137, 231, 240 

KaRA-KHOTO, 65, 67, 79, 107, 117, 220, 
234 

KaTA-KANA, 33 

KHAIKHATU KHAN, 128 

K1IBI-NO-MABI, 33 

KLAPROTH, JULES, Xili, 230, 239 

Ko-cHIH-CHING-yUan (Encyclopedia), 
XIV, 198, 199, 200, 202, 208, 210 

Ko Hung, Io, 195, 196 

Korea, $35 61, 63, 64, 955 116, 155, 
166, 169-179, 182, 184, 185, 254—- 
259 

KOREAN PRINTING, Xiv, 53, 61, 169- 
179, 254-259 

Kos ov, 65, 67, 79, 117, 220, 221, 226, 
234 

Kovyouk KHAN, 120, 121 

Ku K’ar-cuin, 19 

Kusial Kuan, 58, 67, 75, 124, 127, 
£25, 223 

KUO0-SHIH-CHIH, 45 

Kuyuk Kuan, see Kouyouk Khan 

Kwammvu, 38 


219 
L 


Lao-12U, 29, 66, 67, 140, 243 

Laurer, BERTHOLD, 89, 226, 227, 228 

EDO GT. 8 t2) 702i o 

Lr Po, 29, 194 

Li Sst, 8 

Li Tsanc, 173, 256 

Pete ids 2024213, 216 

Liv An, 62, 189, 209, 210, 218, 219, 
220, 221, 222, 251, 253,254, 268 

Liu Pin, 44, 45, 47, 48, 66, 196, 209, 
210 

Louis, St., 121 


M 


Ma Kao, 51, 213, 214, 216 

Ma Tuan-.in, 71, 74, 192, 193, 203, 
Paso bites hg Row t 

Mau Jona, 140, 243, 244 

Mancu Kuan, 67 

MANICHEISM, gO 

MA&r Yaus-aana IIT, see Marcos, 
Rabban 

Marcos, RaBBan, 127, 238 

MARIGNOLLI, 124, 236 

MarINERS’ COMPASS, see Compass 

ME Ti, 2, 177, 258 

Meapows, Tuomas T., xili, 203, 210, 
DIG 210.227 

MEERMAN, GERARD, xiii, 189, 240 

MEsoporaMIA, II0, III, 126, 137, 190 

METAL BLOCKS, 26, 159, 206-207, 251 

MetaL TyPE, see Movable type 

M1 T’o-sHAN, 37 

Minc Huanc (Emperor), 29, 32 

MoHAMMEDAN PENETRATION OF FAR 
East, gI 

MOoHAMMEDAN PRINTING, 68 

MONGOL PRINTING, 61, 62, 109, 117, 
118, 234 


280 


Monre-Corvino, JoHN oF, 122, 123, 
154, 234, 236, 237 
Morocco, 100 
MovaBLE TYPE, 7, 23, 24, 25, 159-168, 
169-179, 184, 185, 251-253, 254-259 
Earthenware, 160-162, 167 
Metal, 170-178 
Tin, 162-163, 167 
Wood, 161, 163-166, 167 
Murtuk, 105 
Muozzarrar, Izzupin, 128, 129 


N 


NARA, 34, I12, 147, 205 

NationaL Acapemy (Kuo-tzt-chien), 
LG PLL eC heh Combed Rom eo 07 Ue 
PR opi hte 

Nestorians, 68, 87, 89, 90, 91, 102, 
LOA, I Tce te 

NUREMBERG, IOI, 136, 142, 150, 231, 
245 

O 


Oporic, missionary, 124, 128, 225 


OcarTal, 75, 118, 221, 232, 233 
Origines Typographicae, xiii, 240 


FE 


PaPER, invention of, 1-6, 190-191 

“Paper oF Marquis Ts’al,” 3 

PaPER, transmission of, 95-101, 230- 
231 

Paper Money, 70-81, 120, 121-122, 
124, 128-129, 133, 222-226, 234; 238, 
239, 243, 250 

Papyrus, 97, 99, 194 

PEGOLOTTI, 75, 124, 225 

PELLIOT, PAUL, xvi, 13, 40, 45, 62, 66, 
167, 197, 202, 207, 209, 210, 218, 
221, 222, 226, 227, 229, 232, 234, 235, 
238, 260 


INDEX 


Pers, 60, 76, 81, 85, 87, 90, 103, 110, 
TIT, LIC 116, 118,128, 196-1ssai47, 
143, 154, 185, 228, 229, 230, 233, 
237-240, 242, 250 

Pi SHENG, 160, 161, 167, 178, 181, 182, 
Wis 2cOr sey 

Piano Carpini, JOHN OF, 120, 121 
235 

PLAYING cCaRDs, 11, 66, 89, 119, 129, 
139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 155, 156, 
183, 241-246 

Puiny, 89, 146 

PoLanp, 116, 118 

Potro, Marco, xi, 68, 70, 75, 76, 77, 79, 
80, 98, 114, 122, 124, 166, 236, 238, 
239 

PoRCELAIN, 89, 93 

Pounce, see Stencils 

PRESTER, JOHN, gI 

PRINTED TEXTILES, 30, 31, 34, 35, 105, 
136, 145-149, 152, 154, 155, 184, 205, 
246-249 

First dated prints, 147 
Methods of printing, 145-148 


> 


R 


RASHID-EDDIN, 9, I15, 128, 130-132, 
154, 189, 197, 219, 239, 240 
Rémusat, ABEL, 140, 141, 244 
Rocer, King, 100 
ROMANIZATION OF CHINESE WORDS, 
XVill 
RUuBBINGS FROM STONE INSCRIPTIONS, 
12-16, 29-39, 31, 197-199 
Chief importance, 14 
Earliest reference to, 13 
Method of taking, 12 
Transition from stone to wooden 


blocks, 15 


INDEX 


Russia, 76, 111, 116, 118, 119, 420, 
TDP, Reedy 05 22 299s 
235, 250, 259 


SALADIN, 89, 93 

SAMARKAND, 97, 98, 99, I00, 112 

SANSKRIT PRINTING, 107, 169 

Satow, Sir Ernest, xiv, 64, 174, 206, 
221, Bh2FaC eR I66 

SEAL IMPRESSIONS, 127, 235, 237 

In China, 9-10 
In Japan, 30, 63 

SEAMS, JofL. 44, 75,50, 122,131, 152, 
181, 184, I9I-I97, 205, 224, 235, 
237, 238, 251 

Suen Kwa, 93, 160, 172, 203, 214, 216, 
220,125 200253 

SHoku Ninoncl, 36, 64, 205, 206, 241 

SHoToKu (EmpREss), 33, 34, 35, 38, 
47, 181, 206 

SICILY, 100, 229, 245 

SILK, 2, 35 5, 345 43, 85-89, 190, 191, 
193, 227, 230 

SPAIN, I00, IOI, 112, 114, 141, 153, 154, 
229, 230, 244, 246 

STAMPS OF METAL AND WOOD, 30, 31, 
181, 202 ¥ 

STEIN, Sir M. Aur, 2, 5, 8, 40, 96, 
97, 207, 209, 247 

STENCILS, 29-30, 31, 105, 155, 245 

STITCHED BOOKS, 108, 208 

STONE InscRIPTIONS, see Rubbings 
from stone inscriptions 

SUBHUTI, 4! 

Syria, 85, 90, 103, 113, 126, 228 


43 


T’at Tsunc (Emperor), 28, 29, 32, 
170-171, 197, 198, 251, 255 


281 


Tal T’uNG, xviii, 189 

T’Al-P’ING-YU-LAN 
177, 242 

TANGUT, I17, 232 

TANGUT PRINTING, 65-66, 108, 234 

TAoIsT CANON, printing of, 66 

TAOIST CHARMS, I0, II, 12, 195, 196, 
199 

Tao-T&-CHING, 67 

Ta’RIKH-I-BANAKATI, see Banakati 

THA’ALIBI, 97 

TIBET, 28, 128, Ig1 

TIBETAN PRINTING, I0g, 169 

T’ren Min, 51, 52, 162, 213, 214, 215, 
216, 217 

Tin Type, see Movable type 

TRIPITAKA, 53, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 137, 
203, 221 

Ts’ar Lun (inventor of paper), 2, 3, 4, 
96, 180, 181, Ig1 

Ts’1n SHtu Huanc (Emperor), 2, 8, 
192, 193, 194 

Tso Tzt-1, 5 

Tu Fu, 29, 220, 251 

TUN-HUANG, 13; 14, 29; 39 31; 39; 49°, 
42, 43> 45, $35 65, 96, 102, 104, 106, 
PopeeTOgs 110.) C17, (136) 147, 7807, 
168, 182, 197, 198, 199, 207, 208, 
209, 210, 222, 232, 234, 247, 248 

TuRFAN, 29, 30, 31, 45, 62, 65, 88, 96, 
FOI EIT, O12) TG Its: 1345: 141; 
147, 202, 207, 231-232, 234, 241, 248 

TURKESTAN, Xil, XV, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 28, 30, 
39, 85, 87, 90, 96, 97, 99, 102, 113, 
TiO eT 1G 8t29,0190, (197, 147, 191; 
194, 195, 196, 202, 207, 227, 236 

T’u-sHu-cHI-cH’£nG (Encyclopedia), 

Type, see Movable type 

TYPE MOULD, 166, 175, 182, 251 

Tz’t-ytan (Encyclopedia), 140, 258 


(Encyclopedia), 


282 
U 


Uicur Turks, 51, 61, 66, 102-111, 112, 
L116, 117; 119,012 7012894 44. 107, 
175, 231-232, 259 


Vi 


VIGLIONI, PrEeTRO, 128 
VimaLa NirBHASA SUTRA, 36 
von LE Coa, ALBERT, 103 


Ww 


Wane An-sHIH, 72, 73, 159 

Wane Cuéna, 160, 166, 167, 168, 253, 
254, 260 

Wanc CHIEH, 41, 42, 47, 181-182, 207, 
209 

Wanc Manc (Emperor), 70 


INDEX 


Wanc WEI, 29 

Wer Tanc (inventor of ink), 24, 25, 
200 

WELLs, H. G., xii 

Wen Ti (Emperor), 31, 202, 228 

WIESNER, 4, 98 

Woopen type, see Movable type 

Wu Cuao-, 49, 52, 57, 212, 217, 218 

Wu Tao-1zi, 29 

Wu Ti (Emperor), 70, 194, 222 


a 


Yano WEI-CHUNG, 172 

Yeu MEnc-r8, 68, 215, 219, 222 
Y1, GENERAL, 169 

YU FAMILY, 58, 219 

Yunc Lo (Emperor), 76, 253, 255 


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